TEN 3

The Sandia Peak Tramway climbs from the eastern edge of Albuquerque to 10,378 feet, and TEN 3 is the restaurant at the top of it. The view runs across roughly eleven thousand square miles of New Mexico, and on a clear evening you watch the sunset from above the desert with the city lights coming on below.

There is a specific and slightly unusual reason this venue belongs in an alcohol-free guide, beyond its two named mocktails — On Mountain Thyme and Elevation Elixir, both recorded by Visit Albuquerque. At 10,300 feet, alcohol hits considerably harder than at sea level; the reduced oxygen amplifies its effects, and every mountaintop restaurant in the world knows it. Which means TEN 3 is one of the rare places where ordering a drink without alcohol is not a compromise but the obviously sensible choice, and where nobody at the table thinks anything of it. For a reader who is tired of explaining, an evening where the setting does the explaining is worth something.

The practicalities are unlike anywhere else in this guide. The only access is the tramway, which runs on a schedule and stops running; you cannot linger past the last car down, and weather closes the tram outright with little notice. Book the restaurant and the tram together, check conditions the day of, and dress for a temperature drop of twenty or thirty degrees from the valley floor.

This entry is graded three. Two named drinks are documented by the city's tourism board, but their ingredients are not published, there is no verified printed zero-proof section, and no non-alcoholic spirits programme could be confirmed.

Open 10:30am to 7:30pm Monday and Thursday through Sunday; closed Tuesday and Wednesday.