Another wave of New Mexico restaurant closures has taken three very different dining rooms. One brought a much-needed neighborhood grill to Rio Rancho, another made plant-based Ayurvedic food approachable, and the third served Italian family recipes for more than half a century.
Annapurna’s name continues at other locations, but its longtime Eubank café is gone. Screaming Coyote and Paisano’s shut their doors, leaving regulars without the familiar places where they gathered for elevated comfort food, allergy-friendly meals and pasta made from scratch.
Screaming Coyote in Rio Rancho
Screaming Coyote closed permanently on October 31 after about a year and a half in Rio Rancho’s Mariposa community. The Wilson family had built the neighborhood restaurant and bar from the ground up.
The menu leaned into elevated comfort food with a New Mexico accent. A spicy crunchwrap, green chile flatbread and the queso-topped Fire Dog shared space with churro fries, while the Coyote Margarita became one of the bar’s recognizable drinks.
Mariposa had few nearby dining options, so residents valued having a friendly place close to home for dinner, drinks and televised games. Its short run still gave the growing neighborhood a gathering spot that had been missing.
Annapurna’s World Vegetarian Cafe on Eubank
Annapurna’s closed its Eubank Boulevard café on October 18 after 10 years. Founder Yashoda Naidoo said the location’s business never returned to its pre-pandemic level, so she chose to pause and search for a better Westside site.
The café served vegan and allergy-conscious food inspired by Ayurveda. Comforting kitchari and chai shared the menu with thaali plates, masala dosa and the Mumbai Frankie, giving diners a broad mix of Indian flavors and New Mexican touches.
The original Silver Avenue café in Albuquerque and the Santa Fe location remain open. Still, Northeast Heights customers lost an easygoing spot where vegan, gluten-free and other dietary needs were treated as the foundation of the menu, not an afterthought.
Paisano’s Italian Restaurant in Albuquerque
Paisano’s closed for good on July 18 after 53 years. Joseph Camuglia started the restaurant in the early 1970s, and the family expanded its original pizza-and-sandwich menu into a full Italian kitchen.
Fresh pasta, homemade sausage and marinara were central to the restaurant’s appeal. Its lasagna layered house-made pasta with beef, sweet Italian sausage, ricotta, mozzarella and Parmesan, and a large gluten-free menu helped more diners share the same Italian favorites.
A freezer failure that destroyed the restaurant’s inventory, combined with difficulty finding skilled workers, brought the long run to an abrupt end. Paisano’s gave Albuquerque generations of scratch-made meals, and its closing removed one of the city’s most enduring family-run Italian restaurants.
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