Buca di Beppo

Being Asian, you eat family style all the time. A few years ago Albuquerque got a Buca di Beppo, which specializes in Southern immigrant Italian food. As I understand, Buca di Beppo translates to Joe's basement. It's great to see that the family style dining has been taken on with another genre of restaurant. Buca in Albuquerque is a reddish stucco building with rock wall accents and a sign of a Buca logo that is similar to original Vegas. It is sort of tacky, but charming at the same time. The layout of the restaurant is not open, but cramped and busy. The walls are covered with interesting photos of the Pope, pop art, and tourist attractions in Italy. The dining areas are separated by odd walkways. Despite the unconventional layout of the restaurant it does have a lot of character.

It was cool to go here because one of my dinner companions, Alisha, used to work at one in California and this provided a different perspective on things. We were seated fairly quickly after we arrived at the restaurant, we did not have enough time to finish our pre-dinner drinks before we were called. Our server was friendly, but the service was just OK. The food did take awhile, but it was a Friday night. We stared dinner with a small apple Gorgonzola salad with a vinaigrette dressing which was great for the four of us to share. We then ordered a Margherita pizza and a Baked Rigatoni. Both of these dishes were good, but not great. The baked Rigatoni had meat sauce with Italian sausage which was good, but the meat was not plentiful. We finished our meal with some espresso.

Overall the meal was good, but not exceptional. I would give Buca a rating of three and a half stars out of five for the average food with the family style novelty.


http://www.bucadibeppo.com/

Independence Grill

Albuquerque the magazine recently did a piece on the best burger in Albuquerque. I was skeptical about this due to many different factors like how subjective this testing was, the wide range and quality of ingredients that go into a burger, the huge range of burger prices, and many other factors that are that I cannot think of right now. First place or as my friend put it, the bull's eye was painted, on the Independence Grill (IG). After I read the article in Albuquerque the Magazine, I thought their methods of analysis was pretty good. They had pairs staffers eat at various places, they tested forty restaurants, ordering two burgers at each place: a basic cheese burger, cooked medium, and the specialty burger. The entire staff then ate at the five places that received the highest ratings. The final burger count was more than two hundred hamburgers consumed or ordered by Albuquerque the Magazine staff. I was pretty impressed by their finding because the burgers ran the price and ingredient spectrum. They also mentioned many other burger joints that did not make the top five, but made good burgers that were good due to various reasons. An example, would be "Not Just New Mexican" where they mention hamburgers served by places known for their awesome New Mexican cuisine, but also serve a great hamburger. Most of the findings or mentions in the article were good with the exception of Hooters. I do not think Hooters serves a good burger. Now onto my findings of the winner.

The IG is located on Montgomery where the old Asset's brewing company used to operate. I guess the owner of the IG restaurant is the son of the family that used to run the Great American Land & Cattle Company. I had a brief, but pleasant conversation with him about how great the steak house was and that I was sad to see it close, but he mentioned that his mother wanted to retire so the restaurant was closed.

When I first arrived at the IG the parking lot and surrounding businesses are not too impressive, but parking is readily available. The only other business open during dinner time was the IG and the laundromat. The entry way was fairly small, but quaint. The restaurant is fairly well decorated and clean, but it seemed very dated. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the IG has a full bar because their website made no mention about this. The bar does carry a fairly good selection of spirits, wine, and beer.

It took a few minutes after I was seated, but a waiter did come over and greet me. He was pretty friendly and knowledgeable about the menu. I did catch him off guard with my forward comment when I said, " I hope this place lives up to the hype." I was pleasant about this but it was pretty forward of me to say that. Our server viewed this as a challenge and was not put off by my off the wall comment. We started our dinner with a few appetizers: the Kobe Doggies, Chickles and Pips which were fried pickles and potato chips, and the sesame crusted calamari. I tried all the appetizers except for the pickles because I don't like pickles. I was skeptical about the Kobe doggies because I was under the impression that Kobe a term that only applied to beef. I think that my assumption was correct, but the little corn dogs were damn good. The calamari was great too: it was crunchy, served with a Thai dipping sauce, and had great seasoning on it. We then ordered a round of side salads. I got a side salad made with spinach with a vinaigrette. It was a good salad, but it was just a side salad.

For my meal I ordered, the small Italian burger cooked medium. I was impressed by the additional toppings you could get; for example, bacon, green chile, guacamole and prime rib. Sometimes the best place to start is with the end and work your way towards the front. The burger was great. I got the additional topping of a thin slices of prime rib on my Italian burger. The Italian burger comes topped with basil, tomato that I had removed, fresh mozzarella, and a drizzle of garlic oil. This was on top of my perfectly cooked Wagyu burger patty. The bun was a lightly toasted corn-dusted Kaiser roll that was not soggy even at the end of the burger. The whole burger was greater than the sum of all of it's parts.

I've been to IG three time now, but the first time was definitely the best. The other times my burger was over cooked, but still a good burger. Due to the inconsistency of my dining experience the overall rating of IG has dropped, but it is a great burger joint. I would give IG a rating of three out of five stars.


http://abqburger.com/