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Sitting on a hillock near Mount Cristo Rey, looking over Sunland Park, Ardovino’s Desert Crossing is no secret. It has been around for decades and has historic roots. Dinner reservations are a must, and its Sunday brunches are popular. It is on the edge of town, sitting by the junction of Texas and the U.S.-Mexico border, yet easy to find. 

Danny Calleros is known and cherished in the El Paso food scene as a talented chef and mentor for culinary arts students who work in his kitchen, but when he was named a James Beard Foundation semifinalist for the Southwest region earlier this year, it’s fair to say a great many New Mexicans learned about Ardovino’s for the first time.

For one of your finest meals out in southern New Mexico and El Paso, I will vouch that it’s worth a trip down to this corner of the state. 

When I ate dinner there shortly after the semifinalists were announced, I inadvertently drew attention to myself by showing up alone, dressed up after my work day, and asking a server whom I had not met before to recommend the chef’s favorite. I may as well have been wielding a notepad and a gigantic badge with the word “judge” hanging on a lanyard around my neck. Domestic espionage commenced swiftly and, minutes later, co-owner Marina Ardovino found something to casually inspect near my table, took one look at me and said with evident relief, “Oh, it’s you!”

That night, I ate sweet potato gnocchi with duck confit, sheep’s milk cheese in a sauce balancing butter with an allium bite ($30), accompanied by pillow-like garlic bread and a rosé suggested by my server that made an excellent companion. 

One of the mainstays of the dinner menu is Calleros’ Cacio e Pepe ($25), which some customers jokingly call “adult mac and cheese,” presenting rigatoni in a deceptively simple-looking cheese and pepper sauce that came about, the story goes, through an accident in the kitchen.

Calleros often returns to that spirit of creativity, of taking advantage of mistakes or playing around in the kitchen, when he tells the backstory of some of his entrees. 

The menu offers a selection of higher-end Americanized Italian standards — Shrimp Scampi ($31), Chicken Vincenzo with mustard marinade ($30), meatballs with pasta ($26) — incorporating French cuisine, New Mexico chile and other regional flourishes. There are gnocchi and ravioli dishes, seafood and a variety of wood-fired pizzas from the large oven sitting outside the front entrance.

This is not, to be clear, part of the chain of Ardovino’s pizza restaurants in El Paso founded by Joseph Ardovino in 1961.

The Sunland Park kitchen, dining room and bar occupy a historic ranch house that was once the residence of Frank Ardovino. It became Ardovino’s Roadside Inn in 1949 where Frank — known for loving food, drink and gambling — welcomed guests for the rest of his life, until 1973.

After it sat empty for two decades, siblings Robert and Marina Ardovino renovated their uncle’s place, opened a banquet hall in 1997, and a new restaurant and lounge in 2002. Besides the farmer’s market, the property is being developed into a unique roadside inn where guests can stay in vintage travel trailers with outdoor decks basking in sunshine and views of the city and mountainside.

Daylight offers better views, whether one sits inside or out on the front patio, and the brunch menu stands up next to the dinner menu just fine with something for a wide variety of eaters: Someone in your party might want a standard egg-meat-and-potatoes breakfast plate ($16) or biscuits and gravy ($16); another might go for the distinctly savory Salmon Benedict ($19) with hollandaise sauce and capers perched on an English muffin, pancakes with ricotta cheese and fruit ($16), or a pizza that will take care of you for most of the day, all around $21.

And so Frank Ardovino’s gathering place to enjoy fine food, good drink and the local mountain range carries on for a third generation with a talented young chef who started his food career right there. It is a fine stop for anyone crossing the desert.

Algernon ��’A������������ is the Journal’s southern New Mexico correspondent. He can be reached at adammassa@abqjournal.com.