Restaurant Review: Maria’s New Mexican Kitchen

By: Laurel Gladden
Published online: Friday, July 06, 2012
Appeared in: Pasateimpo

At the risk of sounding like Rodgers and Hammerstein, how do you judge a restaurant like Maria’s? This institution has been serving solid New Mexican cuisine to hordes of hungry diners since 1952. In many ways, the food here is just as good as it is in similar restaurants in town. But Maria’s New Mexican Kitchen is a go-to for me, often as much for the ambience — the hustling servers, the rambling cavelike quality of the dining rooms, the dingy plaster and well-worn wood, and the kooky pink-and-blue neon wagon-wheel chandeliers — as anything else. Oh, and the margaritas.

Maria’s dedicates a separate eight-page menu to them. Each one, ranging in price from $6.50 to $50, is made with 100 percent agave tequila, and whether silver, reposado, or añejo is your poison, they’ve got it. Maria’s uses no mixes or sugar and only fresh lemon juice. Caution: these drinks are notoriously potent. Few people I know can drink more than two.

Chips and salsa arrive unprompted not long after you’ve taken your seat. Despite being heavily salted, the chips have a strong, sweet corn flavor that brings to mind breakfast cereal. Don’t let the thin, watery consistency of the deep-red salsa fool you. It packs a serious punch. To cool things off, ask for a side of guacamole — it’s a generous scoop — which is often chunky with nuggets of avocado and onion.

This is classic New Mexican food. Nearly everything on the menu is (or can be) smothered in chile, and the dishes that aren’t, like the carne and pollo adovada or the Galisteo Chicken, bring the heat another way. Maria’s green chile has a bright but savory flavor and a juicy, stewy quality. The red gets less attention, but it shouldn’t — I enjoy its deeply roasted sweetness and its simmering chaser of heat.

The menu offers plenty for the carnivorous. The sticky-sweet short ribs are tender and smoky, and a dip in red chile balances out the sometimes-cloying sauce. Maria’s steaks aren’t the best in town, but they make for a hefty, gratifying meal. The Garlic Butter New York (a thick-cut New York strip basted with garlic butter while cooking) includes fries, onion rings, a side of chile, and an old-school salad of crisp, well-chilled ice- berg lettuce (you have to get your “veggies” somehow, right?). Along with tomatoes and chunks of potato, the rich, smoky green chile stew is filled with tender pork (chicken is also an option). You’ll find pork, and maybe a little tripe, in the hearty, starchy-sweet posole as well.

Vegetarians have delicious options, too. The nuttiness of the tortilla and the tang of the gooey orange cheese make the blue-corn enchiladas crave- worthy (for a little extra pang and crunch, ask for onion). The huevos rancheros is a satisfying mess of a platter, with refritos, rice, and a little jumble of iceberg and diced tomato alongside. The kitchen apparently has a problem cooking eggs any way other than over easy, so if runny eggs aren’t your thing, consider yourself warned.

The sizzling vegetarian fajita platter is a kaleidoscope of onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, and (sometimes a little too much) bell pepper. Spoon it all — along with spicy, jalapeño-heavy pico de gallo and creamy guacamole — into soft, handmade tortillas, which most nights you can see being made in a back corner of the main dining room.

Don’t order the chiles rellenos if you’re on a health- food kick. Cheesy, greasy, battery goodness slathered in spicy chile, they are probably the ultimate comfort food, good for the soul if not for the arteries.

Vegetarian tamales (studded with corn and green chile) and meaty ones (feathery pork enveloped in soft, sweet masa) both result in deep, soulful, carbo-licious satisfaction. Choose the half order unless you have a hollow-leg type of appetite.

Most of the time, service at Maria’s runs like well- oiled machinery. Some employees are friendlier than others, but they all work their tails off. When the dining room is full and hopeful diners are packed like sardines in the lobby, servers really hustle, sometimes schlepping six margaritas or dinner platters to a table at one time. Even so, consistency can be an issue. You might have to flag your server down, and you might find that your entrée isn’t as hot as someone else’s. How do you solve a problem like that, Maria’s? ?