Bubbabob wrote:
> patrice > wrote:
>
>
>>Another place was recommended, but I'm not entirely sure of the
>>name...it's on the square in Old Town, and you have to walk though a
>>kitchy tourist shop to get to it. It may have been La Hacienda....
>>
>
>
> Yes, that's La Hacienda. The old part is the butchered, truncated remains
> of the Blueher mansion, once the most ornate and beautiful Victorian in
> New Mexico. All of the gingerbread was hacked off and stucco applied to
> the bricks to make a fake adobe in the early '50's, when the formerly
> residential neighborhood was taken over by developers. They also
> plastered over a genuine Tiffany window that was only discovered by
> accident 30 years later.
>
> Only three or four of the many supposedly adobe buildings in Old Town
> actually are adobe. Most of them are plastered over, cut down remnants of
> other styles and periods.
>
> As for their food, La Hacienda has made many modulations from abysmal to
> sublime and back again over the last 40 years. I have no idea how good or
> bad it is at the present time. Locals tend not to eat there.
>
> It was gutted by a fire about 15 years ago. I watched Albuquerque's
> wonderful fire department get into a squabble about whose job it was to
> hook up the hoses that delayed them from fighting the fire for almost
> half an hour. They couldn't have done a worse job if they had been paid
> to (which is a possibility).

Not painting a lovely picture of the ABQ fire dept. Kinda sad actually.

Thanks for the history lesson on La Hacienda. Hmmm, if locals don't go
there, it's doubtful we'll go.

We're in ABQ now. The BnB is very nice.

This morning we went to an alpaca ranch in Mora - what a great time.
Okay, lunch was spent eating a grilled cheese sandwich at the Sonic in
Las Vegas (NM). So sue me, I like their grilled cheeses and we wanted
to hit the road back to ABQ. Tasted exactly the same as ones I've eaten
for the very occasional breakfast on the run in Dallas - this is good.

Dining in Santa Fe ended up being a very mixed bag. Christmas Eve
dinner was spent at La Casa Sena Cantina. I met someone at Ten Thousand
Waves (where we had an amazing soak in a hot tub prior to dinner) who
snootily said that what the wait staff lack in talent, they make up for
in enthusiasm. I genuinely thought that these folks were amazingly
talented - first song they sang was from Rent, which is a favorite.
Food was good. We both started with salads. Mine had goat cheese and a
balsamic vinaigrette on field greens (roughage on a plate) - it was very
fresh and it didn't look like whomever made it spent way too much time
touching it (that's a compliment btw). Spouse had a spinach salad with
dried figs and spiced pinons. I honestly don't remember the dressing,
but it all blended together seamlessly. For dinner, spouse had pork
tenderloin stuffed with chorizo all sitting on a bed of mashed sweet
potatoes - I'm pretty sure he'd have licked the plate if allowed to. I
had cheese enchiladas with red sauce. Mine wasn't bad, but nothing
particularly outstanding. The red sauce was a bit too spicy, but not in
a flavorful way, good refrieds, rice was tasty, but mushy. The lettuce
shredded on the plate was very fresh and crisp (I know that that's a
little piddly point, but limp, aging lettuce a big let down in my book).
Dessert was cinnamon churros (crunchy fried dough sticks that look
like they come out of an extruder) with chocolate (a half cup of
strongish hot chocolate) for dipping. THere was also a dollop of
slightly sweetened cream and a pool of caramel on the dish. It was a
very enjoyable evening. Even though our waiter sang many of the
selections (very well), he was attentive and personable.

Then there were the meals on the 25th. Breakfast at the Inn was nothing
memorable, but not bad. Lunch was a bust. I'd made reservations for a
very late lunch at Anasazi - not a typical place for us to eat, but I
figured it'd be different from what we usually do....feh.
When I made the reservations, for 2:30pm, I mentioned to the
reservationist that we had reservations elsewhere for an 8pm dinner
(Anasazi had no openings for that evening). She neglected to tell me
that they were only doing a fixed price menu for Christmas. We sat at
the table, ordered margaritas and gasped at the menu. We were told that
we couldn't order from the bar menu in the main dining room. We were
hoping for a light lunch - soup, salad and the like, not a full dinner
with appetizer. So we tossed back the house margs and left. At this
point I should mention that their house margaritas were $12 a piece!
THey were served in smallish rocks glasses with lots and lots of ice and
were nothing more than typical - guess I expected a whole lot more at
the frou frou place. Ugh. Lesson learned, stay in your comfort zone.
Which brings me to dinner.
We went to Trattoria Nostriani. I'll start by saying that service was
impeccable. Our waiter treated us as well as some of the "beautiful
people" who appear to frequent the place - there were obvious locals
eating there which I always see as a plus. I carry a really really nice
camera around, but unless he spotted it, we don't looked like the
typical folks who eat there.
On to the food...Started with bottled water, spouse had a glass of white
wine. I'm not a big fan of white wine, but this wasn't horrible - the
waiter recommended it. My guess is that he figured that we weren't
connoisseurs and that a sweetish white would be more palatable than a
dry white - he was right. For an appetizer we shared an amazing Fritto
misto. It included green beans, zucchini, pearl onions, scallops and
calamari. It was truly done to perfection in a very very light tempura
batter. The dipping sauce was a lemon aioli with minced shallots and
parmesean - heaven. The bread in the restaurant is sourdough baguette
from the La Brea. It had a fabulous flavor, but was oddly cool in the
middle - not enough to quibble about though.
The main course is where things got weird. Spouse had a stuffed turbot.
It was stuffed with Blue Crab lump meat, salt cod and potatoes - all
covered in a light lemony sauce (similar in taste to the dipping sauce
lemon aioli sans the parmesean and shallots). Spouse really enjoyed it.
The small bite I had had a very clean taste to it - no discernible
fishy flavor.
Okay, so I order dinner....this place has a primi course that they'll
basically double for a dinner portion. I had cavatelli (house made)
with tomato sauce. I don't eat meat, sometimes a bit of fish (guess I'm
a hypocrite), but that's it. The dish showed up with such a small
amount that I quietly asked the waiter if I'd gotten the primi portion
by mistake - I honestly thought that there was no way this could be
correct. Nope, this was the dinner size (At this point I'm going to
assume that you get perhaps 6 cavatelli and sauce for $20 if ordered as
the primi course). The cavatelli was great (all 12 or so of them),
maybe a bit over boiled, but the sauce - though very fresh - had been
over salted.
For dessert the spouse had a pear and raspberry tart that came with a
dollop of sweetened mascarpone cheese on top. The crust looked flaky
and there was a large chunk of pear in the middle. I didn't have any.
At the end of the meal, the waiter squatted down next to me and said
that at some point he'd been a vegetarian for ten years, and knew how
difficult it was (I don't see it as very difficult, but sometimes, a
large bowl of pasta is just necessary). I'm guessing that even he could
see that the portion of pasta was laughable at best. He said that he
was charging us for the primi portion price ($20 - really) and dessert
was on him. I told him that it wasn't necessary, but it was very nice.
After all of that, dinner was still $88, prior to a nice tip.
I don't know what to think of the place.

Tonight, here in ABQ, dinner was at Dos Amigos on 4th. I had a
sopapilla stuffed with beans and potatoes smothered in red and green
sauce and lots of cheese (jack and cheddar) - it also came with the
requisite side of beans and rice. Nothing spectacular, but I really
enjoyed the potato and bean mixture. Spouse had his usual carne adovado
- fork tender, flavorful and a bit high on the heat scale...he snarfed
it all up. Dinner came with extra sopas which I smothered in honey. It
was getting close to closing and the sopas perhaps weren't as fresh as
they could have been, but with honey drizzled on top, they were happily
eaten.

So there you have another long report - for those of you who may
actually be reading this.

patrice