STILL ON FIRE
Fuego 505 melds traditional staples with unconventional ingredients
Fuego 505 is not your typical New Mexican restaurant. Owner and chef Raul Maestas melds traditional staples with unconventional ingredients to create something that is uniquely his own. He borrows from family recipes and utilizes his culinary experience to cultivate menu offerings for Fuego 505, located at 5750 McMahon Blvd. NW.
“I take traditional dishes and transform them into New Mexico style,” Maestas explained. “So like, we have our Borracho Barrio Taco, which is not birria, it’s barrio because we’re in Albuquerque and I put brisket inside instead of the traditional way and I make a red chile consommé.”
Fuego 505’s rotisserie is reserved for exotic meats. Guests can enjoy a variety of meats including duck, rattlesnake, elk and buffalo.
Unique meats are also used to create the restaurant’s sausage options.
“It’s something that kind of nobody does,” Maestas said. “Where else can you get rattlesnake sausage, nowhere, or our buffalo green chile stew? It’s just a variety of different stuff.”
Maestas changes the menu about three times a year. Its current menu can be found at fuego505.com
“I don’t change everything,” he explained. “Coming up, I’m going to put a green chile cheeseburger on the menu or fajitas on the menu. It’s just like traditional food but I update it. It’s like my grandma’s cooking, but then I use all the experience from places that I’ve been in, and I add New Mexico ingredients and stuff like that.”
A variety of choices including a tempura fried avocado taco, ceviche, a lobster roll, tacos and a Fuego Plate are all part of the menu.
“You can have Spanish rice, beans or scalloped potatoes or mac and cheese, and you pick your protein, carnitas, carne adovada or carne asada,” Maestas said of the Fuego Plate. “And then it comes with calabacitas, green chile and a fried egg on top. That’s like our little dinner plate.”
On certain days of the week, guests can enjoy special menu items or discounts on Wine Wednesdays, Nacho Thursdays and Wing Sundays.
“We do wings on Sundays, off the rotisserie, so they’re not deep-fried,” Maestas said. “They’re slow cooked for almost an hour. It’s a healthier version of a wing. I don’t want to deep-fry. The only thing I deep-fry here is the (taco) shells and the tempura. A lot of restaurants do a lot of fried food, so I try to do it a little healthier.”
The wings are seasoned in an achiote dry rub. There are also several sauces available to dress the wings including Buffalo, honey, Thai sweet chili and red chile barbecue.
Fuego 505 has a full bar and offers signature cocktails that pair nicely with menu offerings.
“We have a Smoking Buffalo cocktail,” Maestas said. “It’s a Buffalo Trace Bourbon, classic Old Fashioned, and it’s smoked. We also have an Apple Cider Margarita and
instead of a Moscow Mule, we have an Amaretto Mule. We also have a Butterscotch White Russian and a Rosemary Craft Sour. Those are like the top five (guest requests).”
Pairing dinners are held at the restaurant every couple of months. The events are usually four-to-five-course dinners accompanied by cocktails that complement each dish. Its next pairing dinner will be held on Valentine’s Day on Feb. 14. The first seating will be at 5 p.m. with a second seating a couple of hours later. The dinner is $80 per person and interested diners can reserve their spot by calling the restaurant at 505-433-2648.
Fuego 505 began a food truck that developed into a full restaurant concept.
“We started as a food truck,” Maestas said. “We did that for seven years. We parked at the breweries and did tacos and stuff, and then transformed it into an open kitchen bar.”
The open kitchen concept was done so guests could enjoy an up close and personal dining experience.
“It’s fun because you can watch the action,” Maestas explained. “You can watch the bartender making a drink and you can see us cooking at the same time from the bar. It’s an open concept, which makes it entertaining. And there’s TVs to watch all the sports, but a lot of people just come to watch and hang out, associate with the chefs and with the bartender.”
Maestas’ culinary journey began in his late teens after moving to Nevada where his father worked at a casino.
“I got hired on by a Japanese line chef,” Maestas said. “It’s a family restaurant and it was a very busy restaurant. And then I worked my way up from dishwasher to cook. And then I ended up opening the restaurant for him. He gave me a chance to work, to make money, because I came from the streets. So that helped me get out of the streets and then focus on a career.”
Now, Maestas extends the opportunity to work in a kitchen to other young people.
“Somebody gave me a chance back in Nevada, when they hired me to work in the kitchen, and I’ve been doing it ever since,” he said. “And so now anybody that comes to me, I’ll give them a chance if they want to learn. If they want to work. Some people choose to do this in life. And then when they really get their hands on it, they change their minds sometimes or they just have that passion and they just love it.”