La Hacienda, Albuquerque, NM

Continuing my nearly-unsuccessful quest for a Cinco de Mayo festival in Albuquerque, of all places, I headed into the Mexican restaurant on the plaza, La Hacienda, which is one of a local chain of restaurants around town and at the airport. They had all these ristras (strings of red chile peppers) hanging from the eaves by the doorways. I asked both the hostess and my waiter about Cinco de Mayo specials, and both of them gave me sort of blank stares and "huh?" reactions. They didn't even have a margarita special. I guess people in Albuquerque just don't care about Mexican holidays.

I wasn't terribly hungry, so I just got a tamale platter. They brought chips with a smokey, thin, red salsa that wasn't terribly exciting. I wasn't overwhelmingly impressed with the tamale platter, either. I thought the tamales were a bit dry and the pork flavor was obscured by very hot red peppers inside the masa. The rice and beans were ordinary, as was the little cup of guacamole. I did like their sopapillas and honey, though, since they were nice and airy instead of flat and dense.

The main problem with this restaurant was that the service was absolutely abyssmal. I had to ask twice for an iced tea refill, it took a long time to get my food, I had to ask for my guacamole when the food came, by the time the guac arrived, I was done with the meal, I waited forever for my plate to be cleared and had to ask for the check, and, since the sopapilla hadn't arrived yet (it came with the meal; otherwise, I'd have ignored it), I had to ask for it, and when the sopapilla did finally come, there was only one instead of the menu-advertised two. I got tired of waiting for the waiter to take my credit card to pay the check, so I went up to the cashier's cage myself and paid directly. And, it wasn't just my waiter who seemed derilect--the other tables with other waitresses seemed to be waiting a long time, too, and since the restaurant wasn't full, I didn't understand what was taking so long.