• Arby's

  If your idea of a good sandwich is a big mound of thin-sliced meat on a bun, this is the place for you. The meat isn't very high class, but it's plentiful. Occasionally has problems with accuracy.

• Armijo's

  Competent New Mexican food, except for the sopapillas, which aren't the light crispy goodies we've come to expect. Nice chairs in the dining room. Beer and wine license.

• Backyard Barbeque

  A barbeque buffet. Reasonable quality offerings in all categories, but not top flight in any. Usually has chicken thighs, ribs, and pulled pork, along with slaw, beans, and potato salad. A good place to take a protein starved teenager.

• Buckhorn Cafe (Also called Mannie's)

  In San Antonio. The Buckhorn Burger is a fine chile cheeseburger, rated tops by those who like a lot of meat in their cheeseburger. Bar available.

• Burger King

  A chain. Claims to be upscale from MacDonalds. Believe them if you like a flame-grilled flavor burger.

• El Camino

  Restaurant associated with the Rio Grande Motel. Open 24 hours. Better than Denny's (the alternative) if you are starving at 3 AM. An OK place to eat, especially in the context of restaurants associated with motels. Reasonable New Mexican menu (God knows, I'm not willing to evauate a place in terms of their general American type food, which they also have). The stuffed chiles (chiles rellenos to you) are exceptionally good.

• China Best

  Chinese buffet. A good place to eat if you are really hungry. But, unfortunately, vegetables do not survive well on a steam table. So chinese cuisine, which tends to have really good vegetables even in cheap eateries, loses this advantage. The General Tso chicken lives up to the standard of the dish, and the green beans seem to survive the steam table pretty well, so I tend to orient my meal around those two. In an attempt to attract the general-American eater, they have some distinctly non-chinese items. By far the most successful is the fried wonton stuffed with cheese.

• Crane Cafe

  In Lemitar. In the back of the travel center there. Surprisingly good New Mexico stuff, considering that it must be mostly truck-driver-in-a-hurry oriented.

• Denny's

  A chain. Fairly good general American food, heavy on the sandwiches. If you are after a hearty breakfast, this is the best there is. But having a Grand Slam breakfast, a Big Mac for lunch, and a pizza for dinner is a good way to minimize your impact on the Social Security Trust Funds. But they will sell reasonable meals too - their grilled chicken is pretty good. And they have meal-sized salads. Open 24 hours is sometimes a great convenience.

• Domino's

  A chain. Competent standard American pizza. Delivers, but no eat-in area. The vege pizza is fairly good, and there is enough variety of other stuff do divert enui if you gotta be delivered to.

• Don Juan's Cocina

  On Manzanares Street, across California Boulevard from the Plaza. Closed Saturday and Sunday. One of the best lunch places in town. Their red chile enchilada is closest I know of to the New Mexico Classical style, and is very good. And I like their refried beans.

• K-Bobs

  A chain. A steak-house. If your taste doesn't run to large chunks of beef, the Teriyake chicken is pretty good, and the barbecued chicken is OK. They used to have lemon pepper fish at the Friday Seafood buffet but lately the seafood standard appears to be fried catfish. The salad bar (pardon me, "salad wagon") is very good, and makes a reasonable meal by itself. Beer and Wine license. More expensive than Socorro standard - about $10/plate with salad bar but without booze.

• Kentucky Fried Chicken

  A chain. Some of the chain have buffets; this one used to but doesn't anymore. A good place to eat if you feel that you haven't been having enough saturated fats lately. If your group is divided on that issue, the barbequed chicken sandwich is fairly harmless.

• MacDonalds

  A chain. God knows, a chain; nothing more needs to be said. The cliche is that when served an exotic meat, "It tastes like chicken." Can't quite be said of the Grilled Chicken Deluxe, my entree of choice, which is pretty good despite being rather low on a genuine chicken taste. But only because it has a lot of mayonaise.

• Owl Bar

  In San Antonio (Exit 140). Closed Sunday. Do not go here with the idea of ordering anything but a green chile cheeseburger. The other entrees are designed for those who are dragged along against their will; they will be suitably punished. But the green chile cheeseburger is in the running for the finest anywhere. (At this level, it's a matter of preference - Owl chile cheese tastes quite different from others, and it's just a matter of what you like.) The onion rings and french fries are good. The 20 minute round-trip travel time is made up for by the incredibly fast service - eating here takes no more time than eating in town. And, yes, Virginia, the Owl Bar is a full service bar.

• Pizza Hut

  A chain. Competent standard American pizza. Lunch buffet is fast and convenient. Minimal salad bar.

• La Pasadita

  On Garfield street, across from Torres School. Closed Sunday. Can only be characterized as "down home New Mexican food". The ambiance is a little too down home for my taste (examples of down home elegance: velvet paintings on the walls, an electric clock with a butterfly on the second hand), but the food is good. Sopapillas and refried beans rank with the best in town. I like their stuffed sopapilla. Can get very busy (hence slow) at lunchtime.

• Plaza Cafe

  A homemade general American food place. Pretty good salad bar. I usually get their spaghetti with meat sauce, which I think is the best in town (but that's a pretty low bar to get over). I have a half order, and can barely stagger out after eating it. If you have a kid who will tolerate spaghetti cooked by somebody other than mamma, you can get a full order and a takeout box and feed him for a week.

• Socorro Springs

  A brew pub, pizza place, and steakhouse. Cooks in a wood fired oven. The pizza is reasonable, with a tasty, crisp crust, and toppings you won't get from Domino's (artichoke hearts and eggplant for example). But I like Chicago style, and their pizza doesn't set off rhapodies after you've been to Pizzaria Une. So I prefer the calzone, which are quite good. There are quite good vegetarian pizzas and calzoni. The more meaty entrees are a more recent development, though I think a Dr. Atkins type might yet have problems with the menu. They have a few standard beers (brewed on the premises), and a few oddities, which are interesting if you are bored. I am somewhat fascinated by the apricot wheat. It has almost no apricot taste in your mouth, but a fairly strong apricot aftertaste. I don't know how they do that. Sitting around sipping a glass of draft stout with a good meal has a lot to be said for it, and is a pleasure you will not otherwise find in Socorro.

• El Sombrero

  The local standard of excellence in New Mexican food. The "Lupe's enchilada plate", with green chile and chicken has to be near the top in any assemblage of New Mexico cuisine. For something lighter, try chalupas (carne adovada (pork marinated in red chile), beans, and salad in a fried tortilla bowl). The poblano chiles stuffed with meat are a very good meal. For a hearty appetizer, try Mexican skins, potatoes with their insides scooped out and replaced with taco meat, beans and cheese. And the green chile with meat and beans is a fine example of chile con carne New Mexico style (little relation to what the rest of the country calls chile con carne). Tends to be slow, especially at night - a good place to eat if you have a lot of talking to get through over dinner. Beer and wine license.

• Sonic Drive In

  A chain. The food is pretty reasonable for a fast food place. In fact the chicken club sandwich is downright good, though a bit more calories than many would like. Main complaint is that they expect you to eat in your car, which doesn't rank up very high in ambience.

• TasteeFreeze

  The Mexican food here is fast, cheap, and surprisingly good. And I think that a soft ice-cream cone dipped in melted milk chocolate is one of the great successes of schlock cuisine. The onion rings here are a best buy. They're pretty good, and a $1.75 order is a meal in itself.

• Taco Bell

  Yes, the fastest Mexican food in town. If you are in this much of a hurry, get a life.

• Tina's

  In Lemitar. Closed Mondays. Mostly New Mexican, with perhaps a bit of truck-driver ambiance. Food is tasty, but perhaps a little sloppy (too much pot liquor in the beans, too much clear sauce with the green chile). They seem to think any meal is improved by flinging a handful of lettuce and tomato on top, a sentiment with which I agree. I recommend the stuffed sopapilla.

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