Fat Squirrel Pub and Grille

One of my friends wanted us to make the drive to Rio Rancho to try the grub at a bar close to his place on a Sunday night to catch the game. I was reluctant to head out there, but I decided why not. The Fat Squirrel is located off of Southern Blvd in the location that the Turtle Mountain Brewery used to occupy. The building under went a hefty remodel prior to opening as Fat Squirrel. They have a nice patio area to accommodate smokers. The floor is a finished concrete and the bar is a dark polished rock of some sort. They installed some see through garage doors. I think this is for when the weather is warm they will have in/out door dining. The bath room is nice, but I hated that it did not have divider walls for the urinals. I thought the facet in the bath rooms were very classy: they were a dark copper, fountain style that was offset to the side. They have a lot of very nice TVs around with a multitude of channels. Overall the appearance of the bar is great.

We arrived a few minutes after our friends do and it is not too busy. There are about thirty customers in the entire restaurant and at least six servers, not including the bar tender. My friend and I wait at least ten minutes before our server comes over and acknowledge our existence. At this point the server is not too friendly. It appears that we are burdening him to eat and drink where he works. I order a round for the table and this turns out to be as complicated as quantum physics for our server. I ask him for four beers, Boddingtons, on my tab to celebrate an announcement a friend of mine made. I explained to the server that I was buying a round to celebrate and he did not get this concept. After a long wait at a slow bar, he returns with two beers. I then ask him where the other two were. After a long explanation/discussion and an additional wait we finally get all the drinks. I then ask what I owe for the round and he said sixteen dollars. I give him a twenty dollar bill and then he puts me on the spot and says do you want change. I say no and end up tipping 25% to a waiter that deserved no tip for that round. After a few sips I notice that my glass has a long crack in the glass. Our lackluster server did fix the problem, but only after a fair wait. I did get up at one point to take care of my table needs due to the bad service. The staff did not question what I was doing working, but they were rude that I was in their station. I should have gotten a tip for working, but oh well. All this occurred while the owner is sitting there paying her bills.

The menu here is one of an Irish pub with the bangers and mash, fish and chips, and Sheppard's pie. Our server's knowledge of the menu was bad. He could not answer too many questions about how the food was prepared or what it was. I ordered a banger a la carte and a hamburger with a side salad. The banger was OK, but our server had no clue about the sausage. The burger was great. It was properly cooked and the whole was greater than the sum of the great ingredients. The server had no clue about the lettuce when I asked about the salad and the owner noticed to correct him. I tried the fries from the fish and chips that my friend ordered and his fries were great, crispy while thick. The nachos were good, but nachos are hard to mess up. The beer selection here is good. They do have a glut of marginal beers that I am surprised to see in a bar like the Shocktop, Red Hook Long Hammer, and Land Shark. They do have some good and rare beers though. One rare beer they had was a Scottish lager that I have never had or seen, Tennents lager. They do carry some of the Turtle Mountain beer which good to see, it's great to see a local business support another, in addition to just being a great local brewery. We're pretty hungry that night so we order an additional plate of fries. The second batch is not even close to the quality of the first batch that came with the fish and chips. We send them back and the second attempt is better, but not as good as the first batch.

So the bright side of Fat Squirrel, is that it is a nice bar in Rio Rancho that carries a good selection of beer that serves food that is pretty good, but inconsistent. The menu makes an attempt at being like Two Fools Tavern's menu. The attempt is a fairly good attempt. The service is bad. Not the worse that I have ever had, but it's bad. Don't bother the waiter to eat and drink there, heaven forbid he do his job. I would give Fat Squirrel a rating of one and a half stars out of five.


http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=204334185

Almost Gourmet

It's been a number of years since I last went to a Soul food establishment in Albuquerque. The last Soul food place in Albuquerque I went to was Mahogany on San Pedro and Montgomery. My favorite food critic, Kelly Kopke, from the Albuquerque Journal gave Mahogany four stars and it was not worth more than one. Kelly was great because her reviews were objective and her assessments were normally right on, with the exception of Mahogany. I like Soul food due to the simplicity of it. It may not be your healthiest choice of food, but it's great comfort food. Almost Gourmet is located in a strip mall on San Pedro and Copper; I read about this restaurant in the Local IQ periodical.

The parking lot is small. It has far too many stores for how much parking they have, so I opted to park in the lot south of the shopping center. Almost Gourmet occupies two store fronts, one for the catering and the other for the restaurant. I went to open the restaurant door, but it was locked. I then checked the hours of operations and they were suppose to be open, so I then walked into the catering business to inquire about the restaurant. The gentleman didn't realize that the door was locked. I was promptly seated in their small, modest dining area. The dining area was comprised of mismatched tables and decor that appears from a garage sale; I can understand how a start up business may not have capitol to purchase good furniture so for all intensive purposes the furniture is definitely functional.

The menu was fairly hard to understand and was an off center copy with a margin running down the page on the left side. The problem with the menu was that it did not explain what the dishes were or that sides came with your meal. I ordered the fried chicken meal with mac & cheese and cabbage. The texture of the mac and cheese was great, but it was more noodles and cheese than mac & cheese. The flavor left more to be desired. The cabbage was cut into cubes and was seasoned with what is similar to what you get when you buy corned beef. I was served three pieces of fried chicken, but one of the pieces was a half breast as opposed to a full breast that you normally get at any chicken establishment. The breading on the chicken was good. It was flavorful and the chicken was not too greasy. All in all it was a good meal at a reasonable price. My total was around nine dollars. The alarming thing about the place was that in my lunch hour I was the only customer that was around, no other customers came in to look around, eat, and there was no other traffic besides the maintenance man for the building.

I'm not sure if the restaurant end will fair too well due to traffic. The food and service are good, but not great. Overall I would give Almost Gourmet a rating of two and a half stars out of five.

Cafe Da Lat

In Albuquerque there are a plethora of Vietnamese restaurants due to the fairly large Vietnamese population for a city the size of Albuquerque. There is normally a basic formula for Vietnamese restaurants in Albuquerque most have some or all parts of the formula: a little bit of a dive, a TV along the wall, a fair amount of clutter, seating that is not well designed and service that is not too friendly. Cafe Da Lat was the first in Albuquerque to deviate from this formula and the result is one of the best if not the best Vietnamese restaurants in town. Cafe Da Lat is located on Central east of San Mateo, which is a stones throw away from a lot of other Vietnamese restaurants including old local institutions like May Cafe and Que Huong that have been open for many years. James, the owner of Cafe Da Lat, sent his wife to Vietnam to learn or perfect their recipes for various dishes prior to opening in 2003. This investment has resulted in some of the best tasting Vietnamese food that I have ever had.

When you drive up to Cafe Da Lat the exterior is nothing too remarkable except the restaurant is not attached to an emissions shop, hotel/motel, or in a strip mall like other Vietnamese restaurants; Cafe Da Lat is it's own free standing building. The parking lot has seen better days, the asphalt is oxidizing and unraveling, but it's well organized and parking is easy. When you walk in it feels like you are miles away from Central and San Mateo. The restaurant is decorated well with great fixtures and very clean. I really like the light fixtures that they have above the tables. The cash register area is a dark tiled counter with a fairly modest wine rack. The color scheme of the interior is very well thought out and soothing.

When you walk in, it's open seating. Normally you are greeted, order a drink, and receive your drink within a span of less than 10 minutes, unless you get some thing like a Cafe Su Da which requires a few minutes to put together. The service is great at this restaurant. If you have any issues they bend over backwards to make it right. On one occasion, one of my companions got a different pork chop than what they were accustomed to getting and after a few bites they wanted to get something different. James quickly took the plate back and replaced it with the new entree.

I am a creature of habit and have found a favorite dish at Cafe Da Lat that I rarely deviate from. My favorite dish at Cafe Da Lat is B-6, the Pho Dac Biet. This is the Pho dish with the kitchen sink: rare beef, beef meat balls, tripe, and brisket. I have had many of the other dishes at Cafe Da Lat either with ordering it or the B.L.T. method, which is when my dinner companions allow me to have a bite, taste, and/or lick, and all the dishes I have tried are great.

The Pho at Cafe Da Lat is great because of the broth. It's a simple beef broth that is well seasoned and not overly oily due to fat content. The food is presented on great dishes; for example, the Pho is served in a large white bowl with a bowl on the bottom that is to line the top bowl. The stoneware at Cafe Da Lat is head and shoulders nicer than the average Vietnamese restaurant; you actually get your food served to you in stoneware instead of the heavy duty plastic like plates with the Oriental designs or lettering. This is a very classy touch to cuisine that is normally not as dressed up. So right about now you're probably thinking about the cost if the food is well presented, worry not, Cafe Da Lat's prices are on par with the price of other Vietnamese restaurants.

If I were to improve Cafe Da Lat, I would remodel the bathroom, location, and upgrade the exterior. The bathroom is clean; however, the fixtures are older and could be upgraded. I do find it classy that Cafe Da Lat has a large mirror with spotlight out side of the bathrooms so you can check your hair or teeth before returning to your table. The access to the restaurant is not friendly due to the traffic patterns you encounter on that part of Central. The exterior is brown stucco and a red metal pitched roof on one portion and flat on the remainder. The red paint could use a new coat and it could have larger windows. James used to have larger windows on his restaurant, but they were damaged by vandals, so a new location may allow him to have a nice exterior. Cafe Da Lat is one of the best Vietnamese restaurants in Albuquerque if not the best. I would give Cafe Da Lat four and a half stars out of five.

http://www.cafedalat.com/

Monte Carlo Steakhouse

The Monte Carlo Steakhouse is suppose to be one of the better steak houses in town and it was recently covered in Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives (3D). The Monte Carlo Steakhouse is definitely a dive. It's located off of Central and east of Atrisco which is a long way from my normal stomping grounds. My friend Park and I decided to leave the heights and try the place out a few months ago. We have a vague idea of where it is and arrive to find a brick building painted in tan with red lettering and trim.

The parking lot is in bad shape and disorganized, so park carefully. We do a lap around the building looking for the entrance when Park recalls that in the episode of 3D the entrance is through the liquor store. You walk through a liquor store that is small, dirty, and old to get to the steak house. The waiting area is towards the back south of the bar which is next to the grill. You wait for a bus boy to scribble your name down onto a legal pad and wait for them to call you. I look to sit in some chairs in the southeast corner of the restaurant near the bathrooms. This was not a good idea. I think I ended up sitting in a storage area. I go to the bathroom and I find one of the worst restrooms in restaurant that I have ever seen. It smells like things I do not want to mention in a food blog. The fixtures and decor are dated and very worn.

This caliber of a bar is not what you normally find in a steak house. The selection of spirits and beer were pretty bad. I do not know if wine was an option, but I don't think it was. I asked the bar tender for about three drinks before I settled for a Negra Modelo. Do not go here if you are a booze snob. I also did a quick lap around the liquor store and nothing spectacular was found: about 99% of the beer were macro brews, a spattering of imports that I could find at a small grocery store, and about half a dozen selections of various basic spirits.

We are seated after about a thirty minute wait. Do not go here if time is an issue. They do not take reservations and the bus staff is wrong sometimes about your wait time. We are seated in a well worn booth and we have an additional wait before we see our server, who was new and not too familiar with the menu. She was friendly though. We start the meal off with the Greek sampler that has salami strips, Greek olives, pepperonici, blocks of feta, tomatoes and a dolma. The feta cut into blocks was different than the feta chunks that normally come in salads. This block of feta was interesting because it allowed me to taste a block of feta by itself. Feta is really a dry cheese. I didn't think that feta was good on it's own, but when added to a salad makes it greater than the sum of it's parts. The remainder of the plate was just average. I asked the server what type of lettuce is used was used with the Greek salad and was disappointed with the answer, it was a mixed bag that is mostly made of iceberg lettuce. When the salad came it was one of the worst Greek salads that I have had: the dressing drenched the salad, the other vegetables were cookie cutter, and the lettuce as mentioned before, the iceberg variety. When I say this was the worst Greek salad that I have had, it was not the worst salad that I have had, but I have eaten some awesome Greek salads. On the overall salad spectrum I would place this on par with the McDonald's or Burger King salad. The steak was great. Their grill is not hot enough to do Pittsburgh, but they inform me that this was not possible and made my steak as rare as possible. The fries there are crisp and not overly salted. Overall great steak. You can speak to the cooks about the grill if you'd like to due to the open area, which I thought was pretty kewl.

Guy Fieri of 3D called the Monte Carlo ”just an average off-the-hook steakhouse with homemade Greek.” I would agree with him. The steak was very good, but the overall cleanliness, bad bathrooms, the booze counter that is called a bar, and other things take away from the great meat. I would give the Monte Carlo Steakhouse two and a half stars out of five.

Paul’s Monterrey Inn

So much has been written about Paul's Monterrey Inn in Albuquerque over the years one more review will not hurt. I've been to Paul's on multiple occasions for various reasons, but the vast majority of the time, I order the same meal, the prime rib. When you see Paul's off the corner of Lomas and Juan Tabo, you see a off white brick and light green flag stone building that is from another time. The contents of the inside match the outside; when I say this I mean everything from the wood paneling to the furniture, is from decades ago. The restaurant is dimly lit, I guess to provide some kind of mood. There are two doors that lead into the restaurant, one on the east and one on the west, that feed into a very small waiting area with a modestly sized bench. I would suggest getting a reservation to go to Paul's unless you want to wait in the small area or sit in the lounge area.

The lounge area of Paul's is darker than the main dining area. I guess the owner tried to get that area zoned for a cigar lounge during the city wide smoking ban, but that has not worked out for Paul's. Paul's used to allow smoking inside their restaurant and the years of smoking in the building have taken their toll. The lounge does not offer too many extraordinary beers or spirits, but the wine list is fairly extensive. The lack of selection in the beer and spirits is a disappointment and one of the short comings of Paul's.

Once seated you realize, the tables are abnormally large, but comfortable. The staff is very well seasoned, some are hard of hearing, attentive, courteous, and very knowledgeable about the menu, so Paul's staff is very good, but make sure that they hear you. Fairly promptly a server comes to take your drink orders and a few moments later a bus boy drops off pump loaves of fresh baked bread with sour cream, green onions, and small balls of butter that are cold resulting in butter that is fairly hard to spread. Prior going to Paul's, I have never put sour cream and green onions on bread, but I was pleasantly surprised by how these things were great on bread. The appetizers here are nothing to write home about. A cup of soup is included with your meal except on Friday and Saturday night. The soups that I have had there are pretty good. The selection changes daily and I have yet to have a bad cup of soup there. Salad comes with your meal as well. The ingredients of the salad are nothing spectacular: the lettuce is mixed greens that come from a bag and too much dressing is applied, so ask for it on the side.

Now the meat, drum roll, of the review. Paul's menu offers a variety of entree selection, but go for the steak. Their prime rib is great. The down side is that they are not great about getting you a rare piece and the horseradish is weak. Just a little warning, their grill is not hot enough to do Pittsburgh or Black and Blue. All of their beef is flavorful and for the most part well prepared. They offer a variety of sides, none of which will change your life.

Desert and coffee at Paul's is unique. They serve coffee in a stainless steel pot that is pretty novel. The deserts are large in portion and good, but not great. Go to Paul's for the beef. It's a good restaurant that serves great beef. I would give Paul's a rating of three out of five stars.