Paul D.
Yelp
I attended college at New Mexico Tech in Socorro, and we lived in an original adobe farmhouse just a few miles north of the Original Owl Bar. It's truly an historic venue, unlike the "award winning" place across the street. Old -school New Mexico all the way--you could spend a few days just reading the notes written on the dollar bills tacked up on the walls. Now Hatch may claim the title of Chile Capital, but they have nothing on the local crop grown in the middle Rio Grand.
As any chilihead can tell you, red chilies tempt one's palate a medley of fruit notes while the syncopation of heat turns the tune from a waltz to a tango. Their weak green cousins make better fodder than food, with unripe, bitter tones competing with a base of chlorophyll. At least that's what I thought until I moved to the land of enchantment. Yes, the land is beautiful, but the real magic happens when green chilies meet fire. They call it roasting, but roasting is far too mild a word. Tossed into a rotating drums over an open flame, they blacken and blister in the blaze. As they char, alchemy transforms the fruit, transmuting the immaturity into a complex melange of smoke and mild piquancy. Slipping off the skin, the resultant flesh is the perfect compliment for a cheeseburger.
You can chase the claim of the Original Green Chill Cheeseburger all over New Mexico, and you can stand in long lines for the pleasure of paying an exorbitant price for a decent burger. Like so much of our ethnic food, Green Chili Cheeseburgers have become foodie food--what was once every man's food now exceeds the common people's budget. That's a damn shame, as are premium meats and cheeses.
There's something to be said about simple food and that's what the Original Owl Bar provides. A simple Green Chili Cheeseburger with old fashioned ingredients. The star is the Green Chile--nothing else is exceptional. The cheese is American, the bun is soft white, the meat is regular ground cooked on a flat grill, topped with tomato, onion and pickle. It's simply gooey, greasy perfection.
After living in the food desert of the Midwest for a few years, we once drove from San Antonio, Texas to San Antonio, New Mexico just to give my children a taste of real Green Chile Cheeseburgers-- and, yes--it was worth every penny of gas and every hour on the road. It's simply that good.
If you don't stop, your missing a real treat.
