Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Hometown Dish
209
Green Chili Burgers
The Battle of San Antonio
San Antonio, New Mexico
It's a keynote of southwestern culinary
philosophy—the idea that any food can be
improved by throwing in green chili pep-
pers. Sometimes that leads to disaster,
but not when it comes to hamburgers.
With the ground beef itself given an extra
zing of garlic and ground chili powder, the
patty is then loaded with cheese, slices of
sweet onion and ripe red tomato, and
chopped green chilies—an inspired inter-
play of flavor and texture.
New Mexico is the heart of Green Chili
Burger (GCB) Land, and some claim that
Santa Fe—with both
Bobcat Bite
and
Bert's Burger Bowl
(see “7 Places to Eat in
Santa Fe,” p. 98)—is the inner chamber. But
to fully comprehend how New Mexico wor-
ships the green chili burger, head 90 miles
(145km) south of Albuquerque on I-25 to
the tiny, scruffy desert town of San Anto-
nio, New Mexico, where there's hardly
anything on the main street except two
dingy bars—both of which serve GCBs
rated among the best in the nation.
The more famous spot is the
Owl Tav-
ern,
where the green chili burgers (lauded
in 2003 by epicurious.com as one of the
top-10 burgers in the nation) have been
beloved for more than 60 years, since sci-
entists working on atomic bomb tests at
the nearby White Sands missile range used
to stop in for drinks and burgers in the
1940s. The Owl is, just as the name says, a
tavern, darkly lit inside with a clutter of
memorabilia on the walls. (Note the beau-
tiful hardwood bar in the front room—a
relic of the first Hilton hotel, run by San
Antonio native Conrad Hilton.) Service is
fast and friendly, and the chopped green
chilies that top the Owl's crusty, hand-
formed beef patties are fiery hot, at least
by non-New Mexicans' standards.
But just a block down the street, in an
atmospheric pink adobe shack with a cast-
iron stag over the entrance, the
Buck-
horn
—also founded in the 1940s—serves
up its own green chili burger (this one
received top-10 ranking from
GQ
in a 2005
nationwide burger survey). Manny's GCB
also uses pungent hot chilies and creamy
melted cheese, but it piles them on more
generously, and the underlying burger,
ground fresh that morning, is bigger than
the Owl's these days. According to green
chili burger aficionados, the competition
between the two bars—which the Owl
Tavern seemed to be winning just a few
Bert's Burger Bowl claims to have invented the
green chili burger.
