The List

   September 7, 2024

Things to Do
(and mostly not do)
in Albuquerque

Latest updates June 14, 2025

Entertainment

  • Movies
    • Guild Cinema: Good independent theater tending toward the bizarre.
    • Rio 24: Giant Multiplex. It’s fine.
    • Winrock Theater: Absolutely gorgeous and almost abandoned first-run movie house.

News

Food

If you are plant based, you cannot find good food here. Sorry. If you are chicken and fish only, everything you eat here will be underwhelming. If you are okay with murdered mammals and factory food, you’ll probably be okay.

We only give places one shot, so if things go poorly, we move on to the next place. Sometimes we go back and it’s not good the second time and then we quietly move it to the never again list.

  • Local-ish places we’d go to again:
    • Asian
      • Jinja: Wow. What? Flavor! Not consistent here, but at least you can taste the food.
    • Café
      • Cutbow Coffee: A long way to go to get coffee right. You gotta like nutty coffee.
      • Flying Star: Best casual dining anywhere. Food’s okay, coffee is terrible.
      • Sixty Six Acres: Everything we’ve tried here has been good. The flatbread is really good.
    • French
    • Ice Cream
    • Indian
      • Taj Majal: It’s all pretty good. It’s not ground breaking, but it’ll remind you of Indian food.
    • Irish
    • Italian
      • Not kidding. We still haven’t found one place worth going back to. Sigh.
    • Mexican
      • Lindo Mexico: Real “old” Mexico food. The atmosphere is better than the food.
    • Middle Eastern
      • Café Istanbul: It’s a grocery store with a café and three types of baklava.
    • New Mexican
      • Garcia’s Kitchen: Best tortillas.
      • Padilla’s on Girard: They’re cash only, and don’t have a website and aren’t looking to be everything for everybody. They do what they do and don’t plan on making any changes for modern society. Best carne adovada and sopapillas.
      • Sadie’s: This is the best place for a real “New Mexican” meal. You have to go to Santa Fe to find better red chile.
    • Pizza
      • Dion’s: The best crust in the city (probably). We can’t find any other palatable pizza here.
    • Vegetarian
      • Lucky Goose: The Green Chile Cheese Burger isn’t real and is wonderful.
    • Wine & (All Yer) Wages (Fancy Pants)
      • Indigo Crow: Super expensive, but super good. Beware of drunken white people laughing too loud.
  • Places we tried and are not going back (sorry):

Tourist Info

Esoterica