First visit: Apr 2022
While hopelessly looking for parking the other night at Fire & Hops, we stumbled upon Lino and decided we should try it the next night (and they have their own parking spaces). We were burning out on New Mexican fare (hard to imagine, but true), so Italian sounded like a great diversion. Further research demonstrated they also have a brewery as well. Well now, that makes it a slam dunk - we're trying it! Apparently they've been there 12 years, so I have no idea how we missed it until now.
We had one of those special nights you don't forget. Everything went right on this particular evening.
Having stuffed ourselves at Valentina's in the late morning, we weren't particularly starving when we arrived around 5 in the afternoon. Because we arrived early we were seated in isolation by the to-go entrance, which also houses a bar area (they have two such areas). Which allowed us time to relax and enjoy our beers. As mentioned, they brew their own under the brand name of Chile Line. It also gave us a chance to chat with the floor manager, who reminded us of old fashioned professional waiters. Clearly trained in the art, and he made sure everything was to perfection. We decided to split a 12 inch pizza that is cooked in their custom tiled pizza oven. We chose the pepperoni with green chiles. We can't help ourselves, we must have chile in everything it seems. Asked for it slightly crispy and that's exactly what we received. Delicious. Well... I guess we can eat more, so we then decided to split a Chicken Parm. The pasta was cooked perfectly al dente, with excellent tomato sauce. Orange in color, just as I remembered my Italian neighbors making it rather than the usual red. The Parm was slight crispy and superb. In chatting with the manager, he figured out Mrs. RJG and I had just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. So he comped us a yummy tiramisu for dessert and a couple of liqueurs. Just an awesome evening made special by the restaurant and its staff. Lino will be in the must-go rotation for future Santa Fe trips.
4/18/22 (new entry)
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