Blue Window Bistro (Los Alamos)
I barely made it in time for dinner; after 6 years in New York it's hard to understand how anyone can live in a town with closing hours of 9PM! While at Bandelier I double-checked with a visitors center staffer who lived in Los Alamos about other options but she confirmed only fast-food places were open late.
Blue Window Bistro was actually on the corner of a strip mall. Ah, Americana. However, it was charmingly colorful on the inside, and my effusive yet absent-minded waitress was charming as well.
The last time I'd eaten was the bomb of a breakfast burrito I had in Jemez, 7:30AM. That kept me full for a very long time, but by 8:30PM I'd been hungry for a very long time. I decided to treat myself with the extra funds I would have spent on lunch. I ordered blue corn beef enchiladas and asked if I could get both green and red chiles; to which the waitress cheerfully replied, "Sure, you can have it 'Christmas!'" Although I'd read this term in guidebooks, she was the only person in 4 days to use it. My splurge was getting a side of onion rings and a $6 glass of unfortunately bad Riesling.
Something about the enchiladas was off. There was just too much of everything, which oddly was why I liked the breakfast burrito from Full of Bull so much. But for the enchilada, too much meat, too much cheese, too much sauce...it just wasn't working for me. I couldn't taste the green chile at all, as the red overwhelmed. I was also confused why green chile didn't appear to be a sauce...the red chile spread all over the place while green just seemed to be chopped relish scattered around. Most importantly, the beef didn't have enough salt or spice. The blue corn tortillas were pretty but not a particularly special flavor. It was also just too much food...maybe they were trying to justify the $10 pricetag.
The onion rings, however, were amazing. They were made in my second-favorite style, which is very thin strings coated in a greasy salty batter. (In case you're wondering, top of the list is super-thick beer-battered rings, and all the way at the bottom, middling-but-I'll-eat-them, are the small, uniform, breaded kind). For $4 the pile was ginormous, and much tastier than the enchilada. So unhealthy to focus on the rings for dinner but...well, I was on vacation.