A Letter from Albuquerque
Discussed in this Post:
Marble Brewing Company Desert Fog IPA
Differences between New Mexico Tasting Rooms and those I’m used to
Green chiles
Dear Pete,
Greetings from Albuquerque!
The National Senior Games are going full bore, and Meg’s team has won gold in their division.
More importantly, we have chances to visit brewery taprooms. I thought you might be interested in hearing about some of them, and some ways the experience here is different. It’s not the beer.
When we checked in at the Athletes’ Village, we found someone from Marble Brewing Company pouring tastes of their beer: a Mexican lager, a white, an IPA, a red, and a hazy “Southwestern” IPA called Desert Fog. In each case, I think if you like the style, you’d like their product. For me, the Desert Fog was the real winner.
Turns out the brewery is a short walk from our hotel in an industrial area just outside of downtown Albuquerque. We opted to go their for dinner, since the rep assured us there’d be two food trucks there, and one was sure to be a taco truck. The second featured hot dogs.
We had full pints of the Desert Fog. Bruce challenged the bartender about the “Southwestern-style” appellation: “This is a New England IPA, isn’t it?”
The bartender laughed, admitting, “we just made up the Southwestern name.”
You know me; I can eat Mexican food four or five meals a day. I hardly had the Desert Fog in my hand before I headed over to the taco truck. I ordered some tacos the menu said came with salsa verde.
The cook said, “the Chicharonnes?”
I admitted I didn’t know what that was. They came con salsa verde, and that was enough for me.
He brought me a sample, it was spicy and delicious.
I said, “I don’t know what it is, but I want it.” Sweat beading out around my hairline, I went back to the table to wait while he cooked the tacos. When the waiter came by, I asked him for a “Passionate Gose,” when he had a minute.
Eyeing my nearly-full glass of IPA, he wondered if I didn’t like it.
I said, “No, I love it, but I’m about to eat a bunch of tacos, and I feel like I ought to try more than one style while I’m here.”
When he brought the gose, he pointed out a tap about four feet up the building wall. “That’s water if you need some,” he said.
The water tap on the outside wall of the brewery isn’t a common characteristic of brewery taprooms here, but it hints toward some of the ways they are different from ours at home. The Marble patio was shaded, with a big stage at one end, and no cornhole boards. I have the sense folks in New Mexico aren’t interested in sitting or playing games in the sun as they drink beer. Most of the tasting rooms we’ve visited here have indoor games: darts, foosball, pool, table-top shuffleboard, that game with the hoop on a string and a hook on the wall….
The Red Door downtown had a video game room.
And all the patios are shaded.
Food, and the food truck/brewery connection seem a little different, too. Yesterday we were in a couple places where the taproom itself serves paninis and soup. They had a couple crock pots and a panini press behind the bar. The sandwiches wait ready-made in a mini-fridge. Order one and the bartender presses it and serves it. Most of the tasting rooms I’ve been to on the east coast didn’t have food service like that.
At the Boxing Bear taproom, there was a pizza shop across the patio. We called in an order, gave our table number, and they walked the food over to us. We got one pizza with green chiles and spicy sausage.
When you walk into taprooms here, someone tells you to sit anywhere, and they come take your order. Is that against the law back east or just not the done thing?
Also, many of the taprooms we’ve visited are not at the brewery at all. For example, Red Door is in an office building downtown that used to be a bank.
When I based my taco order at Marble on the words chile verde, I hadn’t been here long enough to realize that they put green chiles on everything. Menus have “New Mexico” sections where burgers, hot dogs, eggs, barbecue, pizza, or whatever have green chiles added. Sometimes they offer your choice of green or red chile sauce. Lots of people ask for Christmas to get both. I did it at the Standard Diner when I got huevos rancheros for dinner.
After the Marble Brewery, I waited to get back to the hotel to look up chicharrones and learn that I ate pork crackling tacos.
Cheers,
Jeff