Sometimes you leave your house for a walk with La Forkette without having a plan, but knowing you’d like to eat someplace if you come across something enticing. Sometimes you wander by a bunch of restaurants that don’t sound quite right. Sometimes you find yourself more miles from home than you’d anticipated, hungrier than ever and thinking about throwing in the towel and limping home for a banana. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, you remember the time you ate a seriously kick-ass meal at Pantry Rio (229 Galisteo St., (505) 989-1919) a couple years ago and decide it’s nice enough outside to rock an outdoor table on a pretty little patio and have some late-spring tacos. So it was, dear readers, and it was glorious.
Pantry Rio opened in 2020 in that downtown spot that was once French eatery L’Olivier. That year, as we all recall, was a kickass time for humans, too. Of course, most Santa Feans are familiar with The Pantry on Cerrillos Road and the way it has been serving up waiting-in-line-worthy breakfasts and such since 1948. Then there’s Pantry Dos on the Southside, which opened in 2019, and where, our Southside friends tell us, you can also get the good stuff. Pantry Rio is a little different, though, at least insofar as it has menu options that aren’t quite the same as its sibling spots’ menu items. Oh, and we loved our tacos. No, seriously, the tacos were so good.
La Forkette could barely wait for her order of three crispy chicken tacos ($13.95), and we don’t blame her. Yes, the tortillas were crispy and crunchy and practically crammed with seasoned and shredded chicken, plus salsa and beans and stuff. So packed with goodness, they were, that La Forkette managed to save the last taco for later—which was a grave mistake, because we ate it the next day when she wasn’t looking. But what of your old pal, The Fork? How did we quench our taco lust? With the brisket tacos ($15.95), a pair of shredded brisket bad boys so tasty and tender and so overflowing with brisket and onion and bell pepper and cheese that we could only manage to eat one; perhaps because we wanted to have a nice accompaniment for our pilfered chicken taco the next day? Who can say?
The next morning, we fried up an egg, over-medium, and burst that yoke over the tacos. While we’d normally try to seek a healthier breakfast like oatmeal or some such, this plan was brilliant and well worth the impending “Oh, man, tacos!” nap we had to take in a chair. Our food from Pantry Rio was so good, in fact—and for two days in a row, no less—that we’re willing to forgive the absolutely abysmal service. Little tip for the workers, though? If there are literally two other tables dining in your restaurant on a Friday evening, perhaps don’t jump into a long-ass conversation with another worker in full view of the table waiting more than 20 minutes for some service. They might be some blowhard piece of shit with a food newsletter or something.
In summation, though? Pantry Rio, good. We wanna get back for breakfast (hey, they have oatmeal!) or the green chile breakfast sandwich that comes in a tortilla and sounds kind of like a breakfast burrito, only it comes with Pantry fries, which are kind of like curly fries but better. Hell, Pantry Rio even has some classic sandwiches like a BLT and a patty melt and a reuben. And clearly we can walk there from wherever we live.
Oh, we’ll always share a song by Nerf Herder’s Parry Gripp. ALWAYS!
Also
- Despite how we heeded advice from SFR about the goodness of Midtown Mexican joint Katrina’s last year and totally went nuts on some great tacos, that place tragically closed not long after the review to which we just linked. But now, in the year of our lord Satan 2025, the spot that once housed Souper Salad at 2428 Cerrillos Road (where our old roommate would accompany us for soft-serve ice cream following bong rips) has become a new sushi bar kinda place called Fu Sushi—and it’s all you can eat. No, we’ve not been there yet, though we’ve been thinking about it, especially after last week’s Fork on Izmi Sushi. Just know that it’s open and totally has a website and we totally saw your emails about it, but we still can’t respond because tech is fucking STUPID.
- Over at REMIX Audio Bar on Guadalupe Street, the coffee is tasty, whatever cold tea drink our friend drank there the other day is refreshing and they even have some tasty-looking kombucha brewed in-house, or did last we checked. We just think that the Guadalupe Street construction nightmare is hitting the businesses hard, so you should visit REMIX. Oh, actually, the ramen is sooooo good, too.
- If you’ve never heard of Apotheculture Club, you need to get the net, or at least read SFR more regularly, because we totally had an interview with its founder James Blaszko last year. Blaszko is both an opera fanatic and worker, and a cannabis proponent. Through his Apotheculture Club creation, he pairs music and food and cannabis with small-scale partying in beautiful spaces, followed by some sort of cultural event. At the next one on Saturday, April 26, Blaszko welcomes chef Martin Blanco, aka Manila Boiiiii (a badass chef whom we’ve talked about again and again in SFR, and who we’ll keep talkin’ about until everyone understands), for a menu including beef kimbap, pork adobo sliders, frito pie, roasted cauliflower and edamame salad and other delights. Plus, there’ll be weeeeeeeeeed, and a sunset performance from Balkan-inspired local act Rumelia. Get your tickets ($125) and learn a little more by clicking here.
- Consider this your reminder that Mother’s Day hits on May 11, and if you want to do a restaurant thing on that day, think ahead. Cool? Cool. Lots of places will offer special menus, just…don’t forget.
Y’know, for when you’re talking about moms.
More Tidbits
- Despite how his recent comments on autism are what we would called “fucked,” RFK is doing stuff to the health world that even affects food. In a recent piece for Food and Wine-dot-com, writer Stacey Leasca breaks down how political pressures are impacting your home stores.
- We won’t lie about how we mostly have been a regular Eater-dot-com reader because of their interesting political writing, but having just found out that making ricotta cheese at home is easier than you think from the food site, we might need to start looking deeper into the offerings over there. Anyway, you can make ricotta, and you should make ricotta.
- Regular readers know that we find Chipotle absurd, especially when it opens in places where you can get food like that from a better and more local kind of place. With that in mind, we find it laughable that the Mexican food chain is slated to open its first locations in Mexico next year. We’re not saying no one will go there, but we are saying that you might make your grandma cry if you do. Fox Business (ugh, gross) has more info here.
A Totally Scientific Breakdown of The Fork’s Correspondence
This week in the print edition of SFR, a nice and early heads up about the forthcoming Cocktails & Culture Festival from its head (and only) honcho, Natalie Bovis—the Liquid Muse herself. You can read that starting on April 23.
Number of Letters Received
3
*So you can totally send us emails by writing to thefork@sfreporter.com. For some reason, however, we cannot respond just now. We still get them and will try our best to help from there—kind of like how a bunch of people asked if that Fu Sushi place was open and this week we were like, “It totally is,” up there.
Most Helpful Tip (A Barely Edited Comment From a Reader)
“I ate at Joe’s Dining the other day, and you’re wrong. It’s good.”
*Cool, though we’d point it’s under new owner Joaquin Garofolo now, so maybe he has some special sauce or something (which we mean like “gestalt” and not literal sauce. Anyway, that’s cool, bud. We didn’t much like it, but word.
Actually Helpful Tip
Regular reader Cheryl B is nice and always tells us helpful stuff, so we just wanna shout her out here.
*Seriously! You’re so nice, Cheryl B!
Giving ‘em something to taco ‘bout,
The Fork
