Sparky’s Burgers, Barbecue & Espresso – Hatch, New Mexico

New Mexico’s Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail not only celebrates one of the Land of Enchantment’s most iconic foods, it showcases the restaurants, drive-ins, diners, dives, joints, cafes, roadside stands and bowling alleys which prepare our ubiquitous, incomparable green chile cheeseburger.  To New Mexicans, there is nothing as thoroughly soul-satisfying and utterly delicious! What elevates a burger from the ordinary to the extraordinary is taste bud awakening, tongue tingling, olfactory arousing green chile, New Mexico’s official state vegetable (even though it’s technically a fruit).  In the continually evolving mosaic that describes New Mexico’s cultural intermingling, one constant is green chile, an essential ingredient in many of our recipes and THE centerpiece of any outstanding green chile cheeseburger.  Even such corporate megaliths…

Nomad’s BBQ – Albuquerque, New Mexico

As a spindly teenager who hadn’t yet metamorphosed into my (then) scrawny 6’1″ stature, I had grand delusions of someday playing basketball for the University of New Mexico (UNM) Lobos.  There could be no greater aspiration for a twelve-year old from the mountains than to wear the cherry, silver and turquoise and play for UNM Coach Norm Ellenberger.  Back then Coach Ellenberger could do no wrong in my eyes…or in the eyes of every Lobo fan.  A 1974 Sports Illustrated article described him as “the Newman-Redford among coaches, a man of such striking looks and charisma that his picture, hanging in Albuquerque restaurants, must be guarded lest it be defaced with scribbled I love hims.” When my Uncle Fred introduced…