Restaurant Review: Peppers Grill, Alamogordo, NM

Originally posted on my old blog on February 21st, 2006:

Still trying to catch up from our happenings last night, after we got checked into our motel, we went next door to a restaurant called Peppers Grill.  Of course, it had the usual New Mexican fare, but they were trying to be a little more upscale and had a number of Italian dishes, too.  As it happens, I had neither, opting for the Cajun Jumbalaya Pasta.  The seasoning was good, but the sauce was a little too thick for my taste.
 
Stina had the Broken Noodle Pasta, which looked (and tasted) wonderful.  It was a vegetarian sauce over capellini.  The sauce had artichokes and olives in a marinara sauce.
 
With dinner, and since we were staying within walking distance, we got a bottle of Tularosa Merlot, 2004.  Tularosa is a local vineyard here, named after the Tularosa Basin, which is the home of several vineyards and pistachio orchards.  This merlot was very impressive.  It had a strong aroma, which made me nervous - it smelled like a strong, heavy wine.  The first sip belied the aroma, however, and came off sweet.  As the rest of the flavor came through, however, it wasn't so much sweet as mellow.  It had blueberry undertones, but not so much that you forgot that you were drinking merlot.  It had little tannin flavor, and was very drinkable.  It would be a good merlot for people who usually find merlot too strong.
 
Incidentally, here is a really neat panoramic view of the Tularosa Basin as taken by, well, someone else.  The name Tularosa means "Red Reed."
 
After dinner, we had to run to the Big K across the street to buy an ethernet cable, since there wasn't one in the room to hook the laptop up to the "free" DSL.  We didn't complain, though, since its unusual for such a cheap motel to have Internet access in the rooms, anyway.  Having a spare ethernet cable to take on trips with you is not a bad idea, anyway.