Golden opportunity: This Albuquerque staple is still a point of Pride with unique menu options, reasonable prices

I remember my first visit to Golden Pride. It was a cool fall morning and I was craving a breakfast burrito, so I pulled into the drive-thru at the Juan Tabo location, only to find a long line of cars and trucks snaking around the parking lot. A minimum of 15 minutes, I figured. Next thing I knew, I was fumbling for my wallet while the server handed me my burrito in a white paper bag.

Subsequent visits confirmed it: the Golden Pride drive-thru is a marvel of efficiency. While other drive-thrus can make you feel like you’ve fallen into Purgatory, Golden Pride moves everyone through with remarkable speed. If processing and fulfilling takeout orders was an Olympic event, the place would be up for gold this summer in Paris.

Golden opportunity: This Albuquerque staple is still a point of Pride with unique menu options, reasonable prices

The speed of the drive-thru is just one of the attractions at this small chain that dates back to 1972. That was when Texas transplants Larry Rainosek and his wife Dorothy decided to open a spinoff of Frontier, the restaurant they had launched across from the University of New Mexico just two years earlier. The original location on West Central was called Golden Fried, a nod to its signature dish of fried chicken. The Rainoseks put their trusted employee Eddie Montoya in charge of the operation and he brought in two things that would change the course of local dining history: roasted green chile and burritos.

The customer base grew quickly, and Golden Pride added locations on East Central Avenue, Juan Tabo Boulevard in the Northeast Heights and Lomas Boulevard near the university.

Feeling that breakfast burrito craving again, I checked out Golden Pride’s Juan Tabo location on a recent weekday afternoon. The small building with a pyramidal yellow shingled roof sits on the north side of Juan Tabo Boulevard near Comanche Road. A couple of the car wash bays from the abandoned gas station next door have been converted into portals for the drive-through. One line is for credit card payments only, the other is for cash or card. Both were equally busy when I visited.

I had originally planned to eat inside, but upon arriving, I found that the dining room was closed and only patio seating was available. By then it was too hot to sit outside, so I took my place in the credit-card-only line. As always, things moved quickly, and in just a few minutes the server was passing a couple of bags to me through the open window. My car quickly filled with smoky aromas of bacon and barbecue.

Golden Pride may be named for its fried chicken, but today the cornerstone of the menu is the selection of breakfast burritos. Available all day, the burritos are numbered from 1 to 11. Prices run from $2.39 for a simple bean and cheese version to $5.69 for the popular #9 with eggs, bacon, potatoes, cheese and a mix of red and green chile. The latter is a classic example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. The bacon looked a little flabby, the potatoes were more soft than crisp, but together they melded with the cheese and chile for a smoky and spicy treat. The homemade flour tortilla was fresh and unobtrusive enough to let the fillings shine.

The New Mexican selections include carne adovada burritos, tacos and starters of posole and green chile stew in several sizes. I tried the 8-ounce Posole ($3.99). Slow-cooked pork in chunks and filaments battled for space with soft, chewy nuggets of hominy in the red, slightly spicy broth. There was more pork per ounce in this than in any posole than any I’ve had in town. Served with a warm flour tortilla, the small bowl is enough for an inexpensive, satisfying lunch.

Fried Chicken, Golden Pride’s raison d’être, appears on the menu in several variations. There are nuggets, a sandwich and an assortment of pieces that can be combined into a meal option. I tried the two-piece ($4.69) comprised of a thigh and a breast/wing portion. Although not particularly well-seasoned, the coating was thick, crunchy and impressively free of grease. Underneath it was a lot of juicy, salty meat. It was served with a soft roll.

The chicken is also available in barbecued form, but I chose to get my smoker fix via the Rib Plate ($10.99) with two sides. The plate consisted of three mid-sized ribs and a couple of smaller pieces with some tasty bark on them. Each rib held a decent amount of meat that, if not quite falling off the bone, was tender and juicy. The sauce that came with it was quite sweet. As for the sides, the potato salad had a snappy, mustard-forward flavor but was too soupy. The green beans were better. Cooked with bacon, they were still a little al dente — far preferable to the spineless green mush that so often shows up at barbecue places.

The famous Frontier Sweet Rolls are available in single servings ($2.75) or frozen in a six-pack ($12.95). The single roll was served in a small Styrofoam container with a heady mix of butter, cinnamon and fine-grained sugar pooled at the bottom. The roll itself was dense and heavy.

Gluten-free options are limited. The server told me they have a low-tech way of making the breakfast burritos gluten-free: they simply leave out the tortilla and pile the fillings into a takeout container.

Hyperefficient service can come off as robotic, but not here. Everyone was friendly.

Golden Pride is a well-oiled machine with a unique mix of menu options at reasonable prices. No wonder it’s still chugging after a half a century in operation.