On The Santa Fe Trail:

COMING TO GRIPS WITH THE GREEN CHILE CHEESEBURGER

by David Rosengarten

Every once in a while we Americans, we foodie Americans, develop a new passion for an old and beloved American dish; for example, you’d have to say 2011 was the summer of the lobster roll, a classic resurrected to a tee. But more rarely, and perhaps more intriguingly, an American dish sometimes comes along that similarly rivets the national gastronomic imagination–despite coming into the arena as a complete unknown.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the year of the Green Chile Cheeseburger.

It only took 60 years for it to get its own “year.”

Rising in the American southwest in the 1950s–but off the national foodie radar for decades–the GCCB was born just as the American road, and as American road food, were gaining new importance. Hamburger joints everywhere were finding novel ways to lure in motorists, and the southwest’s strategy was logical: New Mexico, with its vaunted Hatch chiles, is the green chile capital of the U.S.–so why shouldn’t some enterprising café owner throw some green capsicums on a cheeseburger? Of course, no one knows who it was exactly that did it first–though you have various GCCB historians debating Burt’s Burger Bowl in Santa Fe, Bobcat Bite near Santa Fe, the original location of Blake’s Lotaburger in Albuquerque, and a pair of San Antonio, New Mexico joints: The Owl Café, and the Buckhorn Tavern.

No matter who invented it, it was most certainly at the latter joint that the GCCB burst onto the national scene. For at the Buckhorn Tavern, in May 2009, the Food Network’s Bobby Flay showed up to issue a “throwdown” challenge to Bobby Olguin and his locally famous masterpiece. Flay subsequently had his East Coast butt whipped, but the important thing is the national attention the GCCB received when the episode aired on TV in July, 2009.

Somehow, just a few years later–perhaps through the touristic importance of Santa Fe, or perhaps through the influence of food maven George Motz, whose book and film, “Hamburger America,” found its favorite GCCB at the Bobcat Bite, just outside of Santa Fe–the attention has shifted to the state capital, always the gastronomic mecca of New Mexico. Magazine and newspaper articles abound these days with tales of Santa Fe’s green chile cheeseburgers.

And so, dedicated truth-seeker that I am, I figured I’d better get myself over there this summer and have a “look.”

I was astonished. Against all odds, I did not go stark, raving mad over the Santa Fe green chile cheeseburger. And, believe me, it doesn’t take much to get me raving about cheeseburgers.

The problem, in general, has little to do with hamburgers; it has to do with everything else. Most of the GCCBs I came across through a wide swath of Santa Fe tasting…..were denuded, void of add-ons. That’s just fine with me when it comes to burgers in general–I’m a purist–but the green chile cheeseburger should have more pizzazz.

For starters…..it should abound in green chiles and cheese! Most of the Santa Fe GCCBs I had were woefully light on the green chili AND the cheese. It was as if regular old diner burgers were being slightly re-tooled for the onslaught: melt the regular old American or Cheddar on it, toss on a few wan chiles, chopped and cooked…..and voila! The hamburger of the moment, straight from the memo.

Now, if you deliver on the green chili and cheese, nothing else would be needed to make this thing complete. But so many Santa Fe spots under-deliver….then offer nothing else in the package, as compensation. I don’t want my green chile cheeseburger to be just a hamburger with a slight nod to locality. No place I visited seemed to recognize that the Buckhorn Tavern burger is loaded–with green chile and cheese, of course, but also with lettuce, pickles, chopped onions, tomatoes and mustard. The latter group ain’t necessary if there’s enough green chile and cheese, but if there’s not…..

The Santa Fe burger getting the greatest national press, the one at Bobcat Bite, does have its virtues…..principally in the thickness and quality of the burger itself. They grind the beef fresh, every day. They stack it into a thick burger, which they will cook to exactly your degree of doneness–the rare one is beautiful–on a 50-year-old griddle that turns out a genuinely beefy-buttery taste. But here’s the great pushback: if you’re going to make a super-dense burger the base of your green chile cheeseburger….it makes sense that the finished product has to be even MORE cheesed and chiled! And the Bobcat bun’s a little too thick, dulling the chile-cheese effect still further. Ratios are everything! I’d go back to Bobcat Bite–the old-time setting in the middle of nowhere is priceless–but only if I don’t have chiles and cheese on my mind.

Another operation with a highly-acclaimed GCCB is near Santa Fe, though not exactly in it. Five-Star Burgers, with its original restaurant in Taos (about an hour north of Santa Fe), and a second restaurant in Albuquerque (about an hour south of Santa Fe), was recently named “Best Burger in New Mexico” by USA Today. Truth be told–the Five-Star job got a lot closer to my heart than the much-ballyhooed Bobcat creation (though we’ll leave cholesterol out of it for the moment). I suppose you could give the beef edge to Bobcat, for that masterful tower of meat. But the Five-Star green chile cheeseburger is much more of a dish, much more a wholeness. The burger is thinner, but no less juicy-buttery–making for a better-proportioned interaction with the chile and cheese (not to mention the very welcome slather of green chile mayo that goes on at this place). The bun, too, congrues to better effect; it is lighter and gets wetter! However, the classic bugaboo is still at play here: I want more of everything on this excellent burger. If it’s a Green Chile Cheeseburger, damnit–I want an excess of the titular two!

So…..are you heading to Santa Fe…..and feeling frustrated? Don’t be. Of course, I have a dream Green Chile Cheeseburger in my back pocket…..and of course no one has discovered it (until now), and of course it is served at a local diner so humble it makes the very funky Bobcat Bites feel like a three-star restaurant.

I sing of the Green Chile Cheeseburger at Horseman’s Haven Cafe, way the heck out on Cerrillos Road, practically past the big town.

It is right next to a gas station….in fact, it seems part of the gas station. The diners are extremely local….as are the servers, giving rise now and then to a few communication problems with Anglos like me. None of this matters. The servers are lovely; the place is busy, clean, efficient, serves drinks the size of your head…..and the GCCB will blow your mind.

First, you must understand that this establishment, unlike the others, is mostly a New Mexican restaurant, open every day from 8 until 8. It is a burrito-enchilada-quesadilla place, not shy or inexperienced in slinging the two chile sauces (green and red) that are at the heart of every New Mexican meal.

Did you think the slinging would stop when someone orders a Green Chile Cheeseburger? (Which, by the way, is not exactly named as such on the menu. But don’t worry: just ask for it.)

What made me swoon, intially, was the size of the damned thing on its platter–not the burger itself, but the territory it occupies with its partners. The platter arrives with two extremely large hamburger bun halves, each open-faced, clinging to the plate for traction. Sort of centered on one of them is a beautiful griddle-browned hamburger, not very thick, glistening with the good stuff that, for the sake of the delicate, I hesitate to refer to as “grease.” Spooned over the very spot where the two buns meet is an insane amount, insanely gooey, of green chile sauce mixed with yellow blobs of cheese. Taste the sauce (because Lord knows you can’t avoid it). Oh my God! This tastes like green chile!

Now take a deep breath. Clasp those two bun halves, messy as they may be, and surround your griddleburger with them. If you care about your shirt, raise them in a gingerly fashion to your ingestion unit; if you don’t care, just shovel that thang in your mouth. The buns are insubstantial but perfect; the beef has an excellent griddle taste, though you can’t rate it above the beef at the other places; but the burger environment–ah! the environment!–is soft, wet, humid, cheesy, chile-y, a veritable hothouse of Green Chile Cheeseburgerness. You may wonder why you should eat anything else.

If there was ever a reason to put together chiles, cheese and a burger, these people have found it. The Buckhorn style may have its backyard-barbecue kind of appeal, and the Bobcat may get the beef lobby…..but this place feels like New Mexico to me.

Overkill Department: If you’re one of those hard-core chileheads who gets an extra charge from extra Scoville units–once again, you have come to the right place! Yes, the basic GCCB at Horseman’s Haven Café has a real good basic burn to it. But the menu offers something called Level #2 Green Chile (for two bucks)–which is a small side dish of green chile sauce that may require you to pre-arrange a cemetery for yourself in Santa Fe. The chileheads with me during this transformative meal all agreed: this is one of the hottest chile sauces served anywhere in the world, and it maintains its capsicum flavor. I recommend you get it, just for its extremity…..and that, if your heart is strong, you drizzle the thinnest imaginable thread of it along your sauce-topped GCCB.

Hey, listen…..I’m all for those beautiful mounds of ground beef that are popping up all over Santa Fe. But my vote can’t be bought by great sirloin: in a Green Chile Cheeseburger, it is the gestalt that matters. Horsemen’s Haven Café just happens to dish up the most green chiles….and the most gestalt, by far.