Geronimo -- Santa Fe, NM

Geronimo (724 Canyon Road, Phone: 505.982.1500) is located at the upper end of Canyon Road in Santa Fe. If you're not familiar with Canyon Road, about a mile long swatch is lined on both sides with art galleries, with a few artsy boutiques, tea houses and restaurants mixed in. Geronimo offers the finest dining experience of any restaurant we've enjoyed.

To play it safe we made our reservations before leaving Corpus Christi, almost a week before our visit, and we had been saving up, because we knew this would be an expensive meal. Plan to go into the triple digits. But, as I stated, we saved and went prepared for the extravagance -- having checked out their menu online first. We were not disappointed. This is a gourmet experience, after all, not just a meal.

We walked into sheer elegance. We were seated at a booth type table. The bench seat was padded with pillows scattered around it. The fully set table was smoothly pulled away by the hostess to allow us to be seated without having to scoot around the bench, then pushed back into place once we were seated comfortably. We were greeted almost immediately by our waiter, Steve. Geronimo is not a restaurant where you feel comfortable pulling out your cell phone and taking pictures, and their menu changes seasonally, so you'll have to bear with me as I did not take pictures of the menu, and I'm sure I'll not be accurate with the names of the dishes.

Now, on to our meal. Our shared appetizer was a beautiful Fried Lobster Salad. Here's where the class comes in. We told Steve, that we would be sharing the appetizer. Rather than bring it on one plate, it was split for us and we were served small individual salads, dressed and perfectly arranged on the plates as though we were having full portions. The nuggets of lobster were beautifully fried, cut in half and seated upon a nicely corralled mound of mixed greens. Three red dots of vinaigrette decorated the plate. Just enough to enhance the natural flavors of the salad. The lobster was tender and sweet beneath the crunch of its crust.

I had the Grilled Salmon. We both decided to allow the chef to determine the doneness of our dishes. For my salmon he choose to serve it on the rare side. I normally would not have asked for my salmon rare, but it was delectable. It was grilled beautifully and served over a sweet pea Israeli couscous prepared in the style of risotto, meaning it contained plenty of Parmesan cheese; so creamy and delicious! The peas were cooked perfectly and their sweetness came through. I could have been satisfied with just a bowl of the couscous, seriously. But to top everything was a pineapple chutney that just tied the whole dish together. It was simply amazing.

Rob had the Peppery Elk Tenderloin and Apple-wood Smoked Bacon. I was allowed a bite. The elk was also on the rare side and melt in your mouth succulent. It was served over garlic mashed potatoes and sugar snap peas that were fresh and wonderful, with a savory brandied mushroom sauce, another delicious layer of flavor. Where my dish was sweet and delicate, this one was full of bold flavors, harmoniously combined. There are just not enough adjectives.

Geronimo's dessert menu offers a choice of sweet dishes or an assortment of ice creams and sorbets that are served in a trio of your choosing. Well, Chocolate Cake was on the menu, so you know that's what I had to have, but I was looking at the ice creams as well. We asked Steve if we could customize the dessert and have our choices served together on one plate. He very politely explained that the ice creams/sorbets are served in small, individual bowls, so problem solved. Wanting to share our desserts we chose Mocha, Coconut, and Vanilla Bean ice creams, flavors that play very well with chocolate. We also ordered a divine Tawny Port that paired perfectly with the dessert.

A little aside here. Rob left the table to visit the men's room, while we waited for dessert, and it seems that if any waiter spots a napkin on a table where a guest is absent, he or she will stop and fold said napkin while asking if everything is too your liking. Pure class.

Dessert arrived beautifully presented. The cake was about a three inch round stack of three layers of chocolate cake with a chocolate mousse in between, all encased in a coating of ganache. The ice creams were served, a small scoop of each in three tiny bowls, lined up on a rectangular plate. The presentations and the flavors were rich. We scooped a small amount of ice cream onto the ends of our forks and dug into the cake mixing the flavors in different combinations with each bite. Our taste buds were delighted!

We thoroughly enjoyed Geronimo. Expensive? Yes. Worth it? Every penny. Do we spend money like this often? Absolutely not! There is no way we could afford to, yet we would save up to do it again. For a truly elegant, gourmet quality experience, we highly recommend Geronimo's.

For sample menu and pictures of the restaurant and food, visit http://restauranteur.com/geronimo/menu.htm or their facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Geronimo/290337600063.

Fajitaville -- Corpus Christi, TX

Fajitaville at 221 South Hotel Place in Corpus Christi, TX (www.fajitaville.com) is actually three spots in one. Located on Corpus Christi Beach (what I've grown up calling North Beach) this bright, multi-colored building houses the open air Bamboo Beach Bar on the first floor, The family oriented "Grill" on the second floor, and the more upscale Club Riviera on the third. We opted for the third floor experience. (The Grill and Riviera share the same menu.)

While researching, today, I found that the restaurant opened on October 29, 2011. I would think that after four months things would run a little more smoothly. We felt as if we had come into a very new operation. The hostess greeted us warmly and explained that she would have someone take us up to the third floor shortly. "Less than ten minutes," she said. True to her word, in actually less than five, there were not one, but two hostesses expecting to take us up, leaving the family of five who were there before us wondering if they would make it to the second floor.

After a bit of confusion, we arrived at our table with only one hostess in tow. She graciously seated us, and our server arrived shortly thereafter. She seemed a little green, but eager to please, although she was not very familiar with the drink menu. The wine list did not include my favorite wine, Sauvignon Blanc, so I asked if they had one. With a slight look of panic in her eyes she said, "If it's not on the menu, we don't have it." It surprised me a little that a place on the beach, serving seafood, would not have a more varied selection of white wines. I ordered the Pinot. Rob ordered the Malbec. I noticed after she served our water that she had to tear the bartender away from his meal to fill our drink orders. I like a server who makes sure the customer doesn't wait longer than necessary.

We had decided on our entrees by the time she arrived with our wine. Many items on the menu sounded intriguing, and I finally settled on the Seashell of Salmon Roulade which is described as, "Salmon fillet rolled in Rockefeller creamed spinach, finished with tarragon pesto cream." I was allowed two sides and ordered the "hand-hacked mashed potatoes" and house salad with a raspberry vinegarette dressing. Rob ordered the Stuffed Gulf Shrimp which are stuffed with blue crab, fried, and served with lobster butter and roasted red bell pepper sauce. He opted for the baked potato and house salad with a Caesar dressing, because they didn't have his favorite, honey mustard.

Our salads came and we knew we were in trouble. Although fresh, they were the classic bowls of lettuce (dressed up with Romaine rather than Iceberg) with one slice of tomato, one slice of cucumber, a little dusting of shredded carrots and croutons. We have learned that you can generally judge the cuisine of a restaurant by the quality of the salad they serve. This salad is generally indicative of less than top-notch food; unfortunately the stereotype held true.

Let's do Robs food first this time. When our server sat his plate down, he looked at it and said, "I thought the shrimp was stuffed." She server said they were. In defense of the restaurant, he was not expecting fried, but after checking the menu, he had just missed that. I thought that stuffed shrimp would be larger. These were about the size of medium sized shrimp. There was no lobster butter on his plate, but there was a red sauce. I tasted one of the shrimp with the red sauce. First, the sauce was nothing special -- no memorable flavor --  and second, the shrimp were indeed stuffed, with about a quarter of a teaspoon of what I supposed was crab. You could not taste it, but what you could taste was that the shrimp were of the frozen variety.

Now my dish. The potatoes had no seasoning. I take medication for high blood pressure and so I have become accustomed to eating foods with a minimum of salt. I had to add salt and pepper these, they were so bland. My first thought was that Robert Irvine would have a field day with the kitchen staff. (Reference to the Food Network Show, Restaurant Impossible, for those of you who are scratching your heads.) The salmon tasted as if it had landed on the griddle right behind an order of bacon. I have never had salmon that tasted like bacon before. The "Rockefeller creamed spinach" was sandwiched inside the salmon. Let us have a short cooking lesson: A Roulade is the french term for a thin slice of meat rolled around a filling and Rockefeller generally refers back to Oysters Rockefeller which was named so because it was so rich. Nothing on this plate was rolled, and not only was the Rockefeller creamed spinach not rich, it tasted as if it came out of a can, having no real flavor at all. And forget about a tarragon pesto cream. It was finished with a drizzle of the raspberry vinegarette. Yes, the very same dressing I had on my salad. We passed on dessert.

The building is festive, with a pleasant decor and wonderful view. The seating and wait staff, although trying to please, were very unpolished. The food, if ours was any indication, was not worth what we paid, much less the drive over the bridge. We could only figure that it being a tourist oriented restaurant, they expect to get away with less than excellent food. In my book, that is the wrong attitude to take. Rob left with an upset stomach, and this couple will not be eating at Fajitaville again.