Ratings are on a scale of 0 to 24.  The scale used to be 0 to 10, so restaurants written about before 2012 may have only had their ratings adjusted by formula and not by hand (hence all the 2s, 5s, 8s, etc.)  The scale works as follows:

An asymmetrical 0 to 24 scale may not be intuitive, I realize.  But as a rule of thumb: a double-digit score means I liked it, while a single-digit score… less so.  Also, as you might expect, scores from many years ago may not be very reliable, so do check the dates.

Southwest

Where dinner is followed by desert.  As are breakfast and lunch.

Click on the column titles to sort the entries!

Name	Cuisine	Address	Last update	Score
Cafe Pasqual's	New Mexican	Don Gaspar & Water, Santa Fe, NM	2008-05-16	11
This was pretty similar to all our meals in New Mexico, which would normally entitle it to more than a 4... but it also cost two or three times as much. Breakfast swamped in green chile, good; over $54 for breakfast for two, bad.
Dom DeMarco's	Pizza	Charleston near Hualapai, Las Vegas, NV	2018-07-30	9
This place is named after the proprietor of Di Fara Pizza, the best restaurant I have ever been to, and claims to use his own recipes. Remembering those amazing Sicilian pies I got back when I lived in Brooklyn, I ordered one from this place. It wasn't bad. But it wasn't even remotely as good as the Di Fara version.
El Patio de Albuquerque	New Mexican	Harvard btw Central/Silver, Albuquerque, NM	2011-08-11	11
I had my last meal in New Mexico in 2008 here and it was awesome, but I had my first meal in New Mexico in 2011 here and it was not so great. The chips were fantastic, and the enchiladas were fine, but the chile relleño (a highlight in '08) was poor and the avocado burrito (another highlight in '08) only fair. Guess I'll score this by splitting the difference between the two visits.
El Sabor de Juarez	New Mexican	Gibson & Carlisle, Albuquerque, NM	2022-05-09	9
Pretty low prices, very friendly service, excellent horchata, and… okay food.  I dunno… I came to New Mexico in large part to gorge myself on chiles, but I guess spring just isn’t the time for that, because they weren’t very flavorful anywhere.
Frontier Restaurant	New Mexican	Central & Cornell, Albuquerque, NM	2022-05-09	14
This place was my introduction to New Mexican cuisine; I happened to be driving through Albuquerque on the way from Anaheim to North Carolina in 1996, and had no idea that New Mexican food was any different from Mexican.  The fact that I have subsequently made multiple trips to New Mexico just for the food should indicate how impressed I was.  My standby is the vegetarian burrito, full of pinto beans and smothered in cheddar cheese and green chile, but the other stuff I’ve tried is good too.
Humble Pie	Pizza	chain, Arizona	2017-12-12	11
I was not expecting much when I went here, because (a) it was at an airport and (b) the place was way understaffed, so no one was seating people or cleaning tables and it looked like kind of a dumpster fire of an operation. But despite all that: pretty high-quality pizza! It turns out that this is part of a chain, and "chain with an airport location" tends to be a better bet than "airport restaurant". It was in this case, anyway.
Icicles	Ice cream	chain, Albuquerque, NM	2022-05-07	11
I liked this place when there was a location in Berkeley, but the Berkeley shop shut down, and I figured that was that.  Imagine my surprise to discover one right near the Frontier Restaurant in Albuquerque, of all places!  Anyway, the gimmick here is that it’s “rolled ice cream”: the ice cream back is poured onto a freezing plate along with some mix‑ins, and then the puddle is scraped into, in the immortal words of the late Ted Stevens, a series of tubes.  You can also select toppings for no additional cost.  Pretty good!
Le Cafe du Val	French	Horizon Ridge btw Arroyo Grande/Amador, Henderson, NV	2023-01-02	15
Stopped here for a couple of quick pastries on the way out of town, and they made me wish I were staying in town longer.  Seriously, this was such a random pick, and I got a cherry yogurt danish and a “chocolate avalanche” which were a couple of the best pastries I’ve had in quite a while.  Ellie said that her lavender latte was also a cut above, infused with real lavender and not just syrup.  I tell ya, if I ever come back here and the artichoke galette turns out to be any good, this place is going in the pantheon.
Maria's	New Mexican	Cordova & St. Francis, Santa Fe, NM	2002-01-31	8
This was suggested as a good place for a sampler of New Mexican cuisine, and indeed there is a vegetarian sampler: taco, enchilada, relleño, tamale, all smothered in chiles. Problem is, it's not very good. The taco and enchilada were quite disappointing, and while the relleño had a nice creamy cheese filling, it was nothing to get excited about.
Michael's Kitchen	Bakery	Paseo del Pueblo Norte btw Garcia/Duane, Taos, NM	2011-08-13	11
Here I got a bear claw and an apricot/cranberry scone; both were pretty good.
Monroe’s	New Mexican	local chain, Albuquerque, NM	2022-05-08	6
I was eager to try the breakfast sopaipilla here, but I was a little disappointed in my meal (okay, but not very flavorful), and Ellie outright disliked hers (no flavor at all, she said).  I still probably would have leaned toward a thumbs-up if not for the fact that I started to feel pretty sick for a bit afterward.
Pizza Rock	Pizza	two locations: Las Vegas, Henderson NV	2023-01-01	15
The ambiance here, at least at the Henderson location, is terrible: it’s tucked into the side of a casino, so my field of view was slot machines to my left and giant TVs to my right.  But the food… well, this is a spinoff of Tony’s Pizza, and that means it’s world class.
Pizzeria Bianco	Pizza	two locations, Phoenix, AZ	2022-01-04	18
Well, I finally made it to Phoenix to try what many articles over the years have called the best pizza in the United States.  A couple of times I have visited places that transformed my idea of just how good pizza could be: Zachary’s in 1991, Di Fara in 2001.  This place makes exceptionally good pizza, but it is “merely” an exceptionally good version of a type of pizza with which I am already familiar.  Good enough that if I lived in Phoenix I would go here all the time; not good enough to entice me to go back to Phoenix just for another slice.
Posa’s El Merendero	Mexican	two locations, Santa Fe, NM	2022-05-09	11
Restaurant tamales are normally a no-go for me, since even the ones without meat fillings tend to have lard in the masa, but this place does serve two types of tamale made with oil instead: a green chile and cheese one, and a fully vegan one with chiles, black beans, and corn kernels.  I was surprised to find that I preferred the vegan one—​it was surprisingly flavorful, to the point that the fillings were almost an afterthought.
Taco Sal	New Mexican	Menaul & Eubank, Albuquerque, NM	2011-08-12	5
Disappointing — while the chile at El Patio was more hot than flavorful this time around, the chile here was pretty weak on both counts and the meal was mediocre overall.
Taos Pizza Out Back	Pizza	Paseo del Pueblo Norte near Archuleta, Taos, NM	2011-08-13	5
Certainly better than the national chains, but the gloppy cheese and lack of synergy among the ingredients made this attempt to find a good green chile pizza in New Mexico another disappointment.
Tomasita’s	New Mexican	Guadalupe btw Read/Garfield, Santa Fe, NM	2022-05-08	9
This place seems to be very popular, judging from the enormous crowds every time I’ve gone.  The first time I went here, back in 2008, the highlight of the meal was the side sopaipilla with honey butter; the rest of it was pretty good but unmemorable.  I had the exact same experience fourteen years later.  (I had meant to try some new places, but it turns out that not much is open on a Sunday night in Santa Fe and we had to check down to a backup plan.)
Tortilla Flats	New Mexican	Cerrillos & Calle del Cielo, Santa Fe, NM	2022-05-08	9
My first time in Santa Fe, back in ’96, I randomly stopped here and got the sopaipilla helada, a sopaipilla stuffed with ice cream and topped with strawberries and chocolate chips.  It was the best dessert I’d ever had, at the time.  My horizons have expanded since then, and I can’t give it any higher than a 9… but I still have one every decade or so just for the sake of nostalgia.
Upper Crust Pizza	Pizza	Old Santa Fe Trail & de Vargas, Santa Fe, NM	2008-05-16	2
I found myself wondering what green chile pizza would be like, so I did some poking around and found that this place was the consensus pick for best in the city. Yikes. It's pretty lousy. Bready, dull sauce, industrial cheese, minimal toppings. Oh, and the service was remarkably crappy too.
Zu Izakaya	Japanese fusion	Scottsdale & Papago, Tempe, AZ	2022-01-03	8
The sushi here was good but not great, though some of that might have to do with the kitchen running out of ingredients (e.g., my “green green roll” turned into just a “green roll” without the avocado.  The bonus points for being open late and the negative points for playing nothing but terrible boy bands as background music offset.

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