green chile in new mexico pt 2 - burger vs. burger

Hmmm, we're in Santa Fe. What should we eat? Green chile cheeseburgers of course! We first tried Bert's Burger Bowl, which was a stone's throw from our hotel. These guys opened their doors in 1954 and claim to have invented this burger.

Dan manages to smile even though he is not happy with me making him pose in front of the joint.

We both ordered the house specialty and I got onion rings on the side and a lime coke to wash it all down. The mister got fries and a cherry coke. The patty was on the thin side and adorned with cheese, green chile, onions, pickle and mustard. There were no tomatoes due to the salmonella scare. I think they had a sign up explaining this.

Here's a shot of the lovely couple. The onion rings were awesome, perfectly crisp with a good balance of batter and onion. I just wish there were more than 6-7 to an order. The fries left much to be desired and it kills me to say this because Bert's is such an institution, but the burger did not live up to the hype either. The patty was overcooked and not moist at all.

But those onion rings!!!

The following day, on our way out of town to El Paso, we tried the Bobcat Bite, which is on the Old Las Vegas Highway (once a part of the old Route 66). I can't recall where I first heard about this place, but I've been dreaming about this burger for a long time. It's run by a husband and wife team, and on this afternoon, a person who I imagine is their son was working there as well.

Again, we opted for the green chile cheeseburgers, cooked medium. Instead of chips, we split an order of home fries. Everything was cooked to order and we got there during a brisk lunch service, so had a little wait for our food. We ordered the home fries extra crispy and they came out as such. My only issue was that once again, I tasted "butter flavored something." I don't know if it was oil or margarine, but in this case, at least the potato seasoning helped to overcome that strange flavor.

This is an entirely different beast than Bert's burger. The burger is 10 ounces of meat (ground daily in-house!) and the patty alone is probably thicker than a Bert's patty plus bun. On the side were a couple pieces of crisp green leaf lettuce and two slices of bright red plum tomatoes.

The cross section reveals a perfectly cooked medium burger. This thing was oozing juices and the heft of the meat completely crushed the bottom bun. I liked the use of white American cheese over standard issue orange. It was almost a perfect burger... The meat was a little underseasoned; an extra dash of salt and pepper would have made for a knock your socks off burger. Even so, it was still a very, very, very good burger. I managed to finish it, though that last bite was really tough.