Not sticking to sports ...
In my efforts to lose weight, or at least not gain any, my typical lunch is a frozen entree of 400 calories or less. But Saturday is my cheat day.
Recently, in my part-time retirement gig at the Albuquerque Journal, Saturday is a work day (4 p.m. until we’re done).  I’ve been grabbing a late lunch to go and eating at my desk. After a lifetime of McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, Subway, etc., I’ve been looking for something different.
So far, so good.
A week ago Saturday, I tried Relish — a sandwich shop at 8019 Menaul, just west of Wyoming on the north side of the street. I’d driven past it literally thousands of times before stopping.
I’m glad I did.
I ordered the Lobo beef (and why not), a hot sandwich with two of my favorite sandwich ingredients: green Chile and avocado. The sandwich was huge, and the bread was excellent. The order came with a container of potato salad that easily could have fed two people. I’ve seen some negative reviews of Relish’s potato salad online, but I enjoyed it. I hear their pasta salad is really good.
Relish isn’t cheap, nor would I expect it to be, since it’s not fast food. The tab was $13 and change, including tip. And, of course, tipping is optional. I don’t imagine most people tip for takeout orders, but I generally do.
This past Saturday, my destination was El Cotorro, a taco restaurant at 111 Carlisle NE, a block north of Central at the southwest corner of Carlisle and Campus. I’d been unaware of El Cotorro’s existence until I saw a positive mention of it on Twitter just last week.
There’s an extensive menu of meat, seafood and vegetarian tacos. I ordered an Al Pastor, a Carne Asada and a cup of Frijoles Charros for a total of $11-something including tip.
Delicious. When I opened the container at my desk, I thought, wow, this isn’t going to be enough food. I was wrong. By the time I finished, I was comfortably full.
This is not a restaurant review per se, and if I didn’t like these places I wouldn’t bother to write anything. Since I was doing takeout, I cared nothing about atmosphere or service. My orders at Relish and El Cotorro were ready when I arrived to pick them up, which is all I cared about.
In any case, I certainly would recommend Relish and El Cotorro.
Next week (probably): hot dogs.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Lunch with Sandy

Welcome to my blog