Artistic Albuquerque: Discover This Southwestern City’s Unique Arts, Culture, and Natural Beauty

Culture, as a noun, is defined as the customary beliefs and material traits of a group of people. Albuquerque, New Mexico, with its rich history of Indigenous, Spanish, and Anglo influences, has that in abundance.

However, when used as a verb, culture means to grow something from a prepared medium and maintain that environment for continued growth. Albuquerque also fits that definition because the city nurtures and encourages all aspects of its culture, from supporting local arts to conserving natural wonders. Therefore, a cultural trip to ABQ is in order.

Flamenco Dancing in Albuquerque

The small stage glowed red as the troupe from Flamenco ABQ took their places in silhouetted high-back chairs. Strong chords flowed from a guitar as rhythmic clapping began. A spotlight shined, and a female dancer stood up slowly, sashaying to center stage. A singer began belting out a note so loud with vibrato it nearly knocked us out of our seats.

As the Spanish folk song rang out, the dancer stepped, stomped, and spun her way from one side of the stage to the other, the ruffles of her black and white polka dot skirt flowing and twirling above her frenzied feet. We couldn’t help but clap along as the dancer, singer, and musician reached a crescendo.

Flamenco is an artform that began in southern Spain over two centuries ago, but it has global appeal and the largest flamenco academy in the US happens to be in Albuquerque. Founded in 1982, The National Institute of Flamenco is home to both a flamenco conservatory and a professional dance company with weekly performances at Tablao Flamenco Albuquerque at my hotel, the Hotel Albuquerque.

“I think flamenco, at its heart, is a communal art form,” said Annie D’Orazio, the institute’s Operations Director. “You can’t have flamenco dance without flamenco music. The whole thing together. You’ll have inaction or interplay between guitarist, singer, and dancer.”

Cats, Chickens, and Chiles

Afterward, we drove to dinner at another ABQ institution, El Pinto. On the city’s northern edge, El Pinto is not only a beautiful hacienda-style restaurant but one of the country’s largest, seating 1,200 people when full. But after the hostess sat us at a table under a tree on one of the property’s five verandas, the hum of other dinners subsided as we sipped on colorful spicy jalapeno and sweet prickly pear margaritas.

Our plates of enchiladas and huevos rellenos were even more colorful because we ordered them “Christmas style” with a heap of both New Mexico red and green chile. However, the evening’s showstoppers were the appetizers of crunchy fried green chile strips and El Pinto’s “famous” red chile ribs, so tender they fell off the bone.

As I gave up on finishing my giant plate of food, El Pinto’s resident cat Gracie strolled by my chair as if to say, “Are you going to finish that?” Knowing spicy chiles aren’t good for feline stomachs, I ignored her stare, but some tortilla chips may have found their way to the patio.

The manager stopped by to ask us if we liked our meal. As we nodded in approval, she invited us to see what made dishes like the huevos rellenos so special – the restaurant’s 200-resident chicken coop called the Hen Hotel.

The manager tells us that owners Jim and John Thomas – nicknamed the Salsa Brothers, they are the grandsons of the 50-year-old restaurant’s founders – wanted to serve fresh, organic foods, which is how the Hen Hotel came about several years ago. The free-roaming brood lays over 100 eggs a day. She added that the Hen Hotel was the only certified Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) restaurant hen program in the country.

In time for a food coma, we returned to our lodging at Hotel Albuquerque at Old Town, a hotel designed in the Spanish colonial style with rustic Southwestern décor inside its cathedral-like, two-story lobby called the Grand Sala. My spacious 11th-floor corner suite had a balcony overlooking Old Town and Downtown to the south and a picture window viewing the Sandia Mountains to the east.

Morning Zen in Albuquerque

We spent the following morning meandering around the Sasebo Japanese Garden at the ABQ BioPark Botanic Gardens. Walking around the garden’s lush waterfall pond provided a cooling break to New Mexico’s spring heat. Dozens of shiny orange and silver koi swam around each other in the pond as the garden’s spring flowers filled the air with a sweetness, and cotton from the park’s Cottonwood Tree Gallery drifted by like snowflakes, making a peaceful start to the day.

Read More: A Journey of Discovering Native American Art in Santa Fe and Albuquerque

Native Song

We had a filling breakfast at the Indian Pueblo Kitchen, a restaurant inside the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, a heritage center owned and operated by New Mexico’s 19 Native American Pueblos. Even though we were there for breakfast, we couldn’t resist a half order of the Blue Corn Onion Rings with green chile ranch.

Continuing the blue corn theme, we enjoyed Super Food Waffles made from blue corn, quinoa, currants, piñon, sunflower seeds, and pumpkin seeds topped with berries and syrup. The waffles were a dark amber color with the inside a purple-ish blue. Our server told us the restaurant provides culinary arts training for the Puebloan people and uses New Mexican ingredients, items they would use in their home kitchens.

After breakfast, we perused the center’s museum, a place that shows the history of the Puebloan people and how their everyday objects, like pottery, tools, and clothes, are works of art. There was even a section that explored their languages. I could hear a Puebloan greeting or get directions in several different dialects by pressing a button.

Before leaving the cultural center, I saw some Puebloan artisans selling pottery and jewelry at small tables. I couldn’t resist purchasing a small clay pot from Keith Chino. He told me the pots have a window like his ancestral homes and that the window faces a specific constellation in the sky. He shined a light into it so I could see the Big Dipper painted on the bottom.

“I’m Acamo, located 60 miles west of Albuquerque,” he explained. “We migrated from the Chalco Canyon/Mesa Verde area. They were skywatchers, and we’re also skywatchers.”

To the Sky

That afternoon, we rode the famous Sandia Peak Tramway for a bit of hiking and to enjoy spectacular views of the city from Sandia Peak. However, the tram ride was the most entertaining part because of the anecdotes from our cabin operator, Chris. With long, straight hair and tattoos, he said his day job was in a rock band. Driving a tramcar on the world’s second-longest aerial tramway was merely a side gig.

Chris told the story of how the tramway came about back in the 1960s when an avid local skier, Bob Nordhaus, would hike with his buddies in deep snow for up to three hours to ski Sandia Peak, but after seeing ski trams in Switzerland, thought Albuquerque should have one.

Chris said the tram was 2.78 miles long and built over two years before opening in 1966 at the cost of $2 million, $23 million in today’s dollars. On our way back down, he tested us with tram trivia to see if we’d been paying attention on the way up and even played the Price is Right theme song from his phone as we tried to remember the answers.

Artistic Table

That night, we had a special dinner at West ABQ’s Electric Playhouse. A new experience, Electric Playhouse is a digital funhouse with games and interactive rooms for people of all ages. We joined in with a group of elementary kids throwing dodge balls at a wall trying to hit alien ships as they dropped down across a projected screen like the 1980s Galaga video game.

After working up our appetite, we slipped into one of the playhouse’s three private dining rooms. The rooms feature digital projection equipment in the ceiling that light up the walls and table with themed videos and graphics that we could manipulate by waving our hands over the table.

The room’s themes changed with each course. The first theme was Albuquerque and featured hot air balloons floating on the table between our plates of shrimp and avocado bruschetta. Waving our hands over the balloons, we changed their direction, pushing them this way and that. Next was a blue-hued geometric theme that danced around our white plates of tamales with risotto and vegetables.

With our chocolate mousse tart dessert, we saw a Rio Grande-themed display with blue water rushing through red clay canyons, waving our hands over the water to change its direction. The manager told us they had a Halloween-themed display where tarantulas appear to walk over your dinner plates. We politely declined that one.

Art in the Outdoors

The artwork was difficult to see at first, especially in the bright morning sunshine. But once we saw the first drawing – a simple tan outline of a roadrunner with its distinctive feathered tail against a black volcanic boulder – suddenly, they were everywhere. That’s because we were in a different kind of art gallery, Petroglyphs National Monument.

Taking up over 7,000 acres along the city’s West Mesa, Petroglyphs NM contains thousands of carvings by New Mexico’s native inhabitants from over a thousand years ago. While these ancient carvings are simple in execution, they contain a profound amount of information about the people who lived here before the Spanish arrived.

On our short hike amid Alburquerque’s suburbs, we saw a collection of things carved into the black rocks – animals, birds, plants, celestial bodies, people, hunting scenes, and strange symbols, symbols that only had significance to the people who drew them.

A Visit to Bow & Arrow Brewing Company

Post-hike, we quenched our thirst at Bow & Arrow Brewing Company near downtown. Co-owner Shyla Shepard is a Native American originally from South Dakota with a penchant for creating sometimes quirky but always delicious brews.

We chatted while I enjoyed the Denim Tux pilsner brewed with local blue corn, and my companion enjoyed Besos, a fruited sour made with juiced cucumber, key lime, orange zest, and Himalayan sea salt. Both beers were under five percent ABV making for easy sipping after our hike.

“We like to incorporate local ingredients when we can,” said Shepard. “I’m proud of the fact that we have a supplier for blue corn. It’s a pueblo that’s just 18 miles north of us.”

Dining at Farm & Table

We kept the outside theme going by having an alfresco dinner on the patio at Farm & Table. The restaurant grows most of its own produce on its on-site, 10-acre farm and ranch, Sol Harvest.

We started with small plates of pork belly with hushpuppies and grilled mushrooms before diving into beautiful plates of Cavatelli pasta with fresh asparagus. We chose this dish after our server said it wouldn’t be on the menu much longer since the spring asparagus was almost gone. The dish came in every shade of green, including the emerald-colored house-made pasta mixed with Kelly green peas, forest green arugula, and bright green asparagus.

The restaurant also had an extensive wine list, and we were encouraged to grab our glasses and walk around the farm grounds. The farm’s two guinea hens walked along the patio wall behind us, posing for photos. The hens were not food, however. Our server said they had an important job: Devouring pesky insects. Judging by their plumpness and lack of buzzing around our tables, they do their job well.

A Flavorful Farewell

Before heading to the airport, I zipped over to the Sawmill Market for a quick breakfast. Sawmill Market is the state’s first artisanal food hall and features 27 local establishments serving breakfast, lunch, dinner, and everything in between.

Across the street from Hotel Albuquerque, it was easy to go over to grab a chai latte from Plata Coffee and some avocado toast topped with a runny fried egg from Mercantile Café. I enjoyed my satisfying meal in the building’s courtyard, soaking in one more sunny Southwestern morning before heading home.

More Ways We Enjoyed Albuquerque:

• Hot air ballooning with Rainbow Ryders
• Shopping, dining, and wine tasting in historic Old Town
• Driving along the iconic Route 66

If You Go:

• Tablao Flamenco Albuquerque
• El Pinto
• Hotel Albuquerque
• ABQ BioPark Botanic Gardens
• Indian Pueblo Cultural Center
• Sandia Peak Tramway
• Electric Playhouse
• Petroglyphs National Monument
• Bow & Arrow Brewing Company
• Farm & Table
• Sawmill Market

Author Bio: Carrie Dow is an award-winning freelance journalist based in Charlotte, NC, whose work has appeared in regional and national publications. Former editor for The Drink Nation, she uses her expertise on the food and beverage industry to travel the world looking for unique eats and experiences. She also founded What’s Pawsitive, a website that profiles animal-based travel, animal rescue organizations, and animal welfare advocates around the world.