Drool-worthy Green Chile Cheeseburger & Tacos & Everything Else at Burger Boy

Burger Boy Menu and Location

One day you might find yourself on NM HWY 14, cruising up or down the Turquoise Trail National Scenic Byway. This byway is basically the “back road” linking Albuquerque and Santa Fe, taking you along the east side of the Sandia Mountains from Tijeras to Santa Fe. Along the way, you’ll pass through some beautiful country and through the historic mining (now eclectic arts & crafts) towns of Madrid, Cerillos, and Golden. This makes for a lovely day trip from the ABQ or SF areas, stopping at each little town along the way, learning their history, viewing their art, and drinking their coffee. Oh, and eating their burgers, though this goes without saying.

Heading north from Tijeras to Santa Fe, the first town you’ll hit is Cedar Crest, just a few miles north of I-40 on Hwy 14.

Tucked into the few buildings and brush on the west side of the road is where you’ll find Burger Boy. It’s a family owned and run business that has been slinging burgers in the East Mountains for more than 28 years. The ambiance is “diner casual” — just this side of a greasy spoon — but clean enough and very comfortable. The walls are adorned with paintings and news clippings and photos for your perusal while you wait for your food. Service is quick and friendly, and your drink will always be refilled. (You can just take your cup to the counter and ask for more if you’re in a hurry.)

Burger Boy is pretty much our favorite place to eat on the East Mountains, when we want to be bad (but oh, so good). You won’t find any salads here (I’m guessing… I’ve never looked, don’t judge me), but what you will find is THE BEST Green Chile Cheeseburger I’ve had in the past few years. And that’s saying something, because I’ve had a lot of them.

Green Chili Bill — the original Burger Boy?

When anyone in the Zia-Roadrunner-Little Coyote clan has a hankering for a REAL green chile cheeseburger (the kind that drips all over the place and has a little heat in the chile) with a side of some kind of deep-fried thing (tots, fries, onion rings), we head down to Burger Boy to get our grub on. Our most commonly-ordered food is the green chile cheeseburger, natch, with tots or fries. Because this is ALWAYS WONDERFUL and this is just what we eat here in New Mexico. I recommend ordering this burger with everything on it except pickles. Pickles and green chile just don’t quite work together.

This is not a fancy burger. It’s not kobe beef, it’s not spritzed with truffle oil, and it doesn’t come stacked 8″ high with a steak knife stabbed down the middle of it to hold it all together. It’s just a burger. THANK YOU, BURGER BOY.

Green Chile Cheeseburger with Tater Tots — how could you not order this?!

This one time, I got it without cheese. It was still awesome. The onion rings are a little on the thin side for me (not much onion) but they were still crispy and tasty.

Burger Boy – Green Chile Hamburger with Onion Rings

LOOK AT MY GREEN CHILE!

Green Chile Hamburger — just, yes. Go eat at Burger Boy already.

OK, if you can bring yourself to branch out from the GCCB family of products, your next step should be the taco plate. This is your standard taco plate, but it is SO GOOD. The tacos are crispy, the ground beef is juicy and flavorful, and these babies go down really easily. Like you could eat 6 of them, that kind of easily.

Taco Bout Perfection — Taco Plate at Burger Boy

I had to wait for the weather to cool down a tad before I ordered the Frito Chile Pie. It seems like a cold-weather food. So when the temps dipped below 80 (ha), I headed straight over there and ordered it. This starts out like your standard Frito pie, but where traditionally you would have chili (with an I — the red stuff with meat and beans and spices), here you have chile (with an E — the New Mexico stuff with red chile peppers and awesomeness). The chile was flavorful and spicy (just this side of too spicy). There were ample corn chips and plenty of iceberg lettuce and tomatoes on top. There was also a heaping scoop of ground beef and lots of melty cheddar cheese. It was just… wonderful. If you can tear yourself away from the GCCB, this is a great option to try.

Frito Chile (with an E) Pie at Burger Boy. With all that lettuce you can pretend it’s a salad!

Everything we have tried here at Burger Boy has been fantastic. That’s why anytime feel we have somehow “earned it,” we head on over to Burger Boy and chow down on some of the best Green Chile Cheeseburgers this side of the Owl Café (and that side of it, too … all sides).

Los Cuates – East Mountains

Los Cuates has five restaurants in the Albuquerque area. This review is based solely on the location at 1250 Hwy 14 in Sandia Park, NM. 

According to the Los Cuates website, they “offer freshly prepared food and a warm ambience that exudes an affordable dining experience,” and I agree. The food was good, the atmosphere was warm and friendly, the service was good, albeit a bit slow, and the price was surprisingly affordable.

We arrived at Los Cuates on Saturday at about 6:00 pm. The restaurant was not crowded. When we walked in, we were greeted and seated right away by a smiling and friendly hostess. At our table, the waitress arrived quickly, brought chips and salsa, and took our drink orders.

CHIPS AND SALSA

Thin & crispy chips! Mild salsa and hot (l-r). Good separate or mixed together!

New Mexico — the land of free chips and salsa! The chips were thin, crispy, warm, and delicious. The only problem here was an unusual amount of “crumbs,” broken bits of chip too small for dipping. When we pointed this out to the waitress, she quickly whisked them away and brought us a fresh batch. As for the salsa, Zia and I loved it! It was dark and spicy with a unique smoky flavor you don’t normally find in restaurant style salsa. However, it was pretty spicy, so the waitress brought out a milder option, which was more tomato-based, rather than chile-based. In my opinion, both salsas were very tasty.

MARGARITA

Zia’s mom ordered a margarita on the rocks. No one else ordered a “drink” drink, so we all got to take sips. The margarita was REALLY good! So good in fact, that if I were not driving, I would have ordered one of the large sized ones for myself. (Los Cuates offers two margarita sizes, a “normal” sized one like you’d expect in a typical margarita glass, and the “large,” which is roughly the size of a mop bucket…with a salted rim.)

Margarita in a Cactus Glass.

SERVICE

When the waitress returned, she told us that she was new and still learning the menu. I appreciated that, and I also appreciated that she was very friendly and quick with a smile. Before I talk about the food, I will say that a mistake was made in the kitchen with entering our order into the system. This was not our waitress’s fault. We noticed that our order was taking a long time, as people who came in after us were already being served. Eventually, a manager came out and told us what had happened, at that he was at fault, and that they would have our order out very soon. To make up for the snafu, they brought out extra sopapillas, which I thought made up for the error.

THE FOOD

Now for the food! I’ll give a quick tour around the table. Zia’s dad ordered the Tacos, Zia’s mom ordered the Indian Taco, Zia ordered two bean tostadas from the a la carte menu, and I had a special called the “New Mexican Combo.”

New Mexican Combo: Taco, Enchilada, 1/4 rack ribs, RBI. Star of the plate = Red Chile Ribs!

The NEW MEXICAN COMBO was a taco, a cheese enchilada, and a ¼ rack of pork ribs (about 3 small ribs worth) with the standard rice, beans, and iceberg lettuce (RBI) on the side. The highlight of the meal was the ribs. They were slathered in a red chile sauce, and were tender, spicy, and tasty. The taco and cheese enchilada were good, but not remarkable. The seasoned ground beef in the taco was nicely seasoned and very good, and the garnishments were all fresh and delicious. The shell was the downside — not that it was bad, just ordinary.

INDIAN TACO

It was determined by a very informal non-poll that the Indian Taco was the best entrée on the table. The base was basically a very large, flat sopapilla. In the center, it was heaped with seasoned ground beef, cheese, beans, lettuce, and tomato. It might not look like much, but the combo of the slightly sweet “fry bread” (I still maintain that this is a sopapilla) and salty seasoned ground beef was kind of magical.

Indian Taco — SO GOOD

TOSTADAS (“BEAN DIP”)

According to Zia, she was expecting two flat, crispy corn tortillas, topped with refried beans, lettuce, cheese, onion, and tomato.  This is the way tostadas are served 75% of the time in restaurants (and 100% of the time at home). You should be able to pick them up and eat them fairly neatly — like a flat taco. So when the tostadas arrived, she was a little… bummed. As you can probably see in the photo below, the tostadas were actually two very large shells, filled about 1.5″ deep with refried beans. That’s a lot of bean. Zia was able to pick & dip her way through about 2/3 of one tostada before giving up. She also said that the shells were stale.

Tostadas, aka “two large orders of bean dip”

TACO PLATE

One of the greatest things about living in New Mexico is the ability — nay, the right — to order a Taco Plate almost anywhere. NM tacos typically come with seasoned ground beef, grated cheddar, diced onion, shredded lettuce, and diced tomato. Salsa on the side. Because they are so standard in composition, it’s easy to compare one taco plate to another. The verdict here is that Los Cuates puts out a solid taco plate. Not the best in the state (or even in the East Mountains), but pretty good. The highlight of this taco plate, according to Zia’s dad, was the seasoned ground beef.

Taco Plate — a NM Staple!

NO SUCH THING AS A BAD SOPAPILLA

Due to the aforementioned snafu with our order, the server brought out what seemed to be around 100 sopapillas (probably more like a dozen…but it seemed like a lot more). They were somewhat dense & chewy (which may or may not be your thing), fresh, and hot.

Sopapillas = good. More sopapillas = better.

THE CHILE

We ordered both red and green on the side for the table. Both were fine but not knock-your-socks-off amazing. The red had a little bite to it, and the green was milder but had nice big chunks of green chile in it.

THE CHECK

When I’m ordering, especially when I’m hungry, I don’t always pay attention to prices; I mostly concentrate on the food. (This has burned me before. I once paid $60 for a steak at a restaurant in California. Talk about sticker shock!) Fortunately, at Los Cuates, sticker shock worked in our favor. Our bill for four adults, including a cocktail, was only $55 before the tip. We all thought this was very reasonable!

LIVE MUSIC

The building runs north-south. We were seated at the north end of the restaurant. At the south end is the bar, and there was a band playing in the bar that night. Needless to say, the bar area was very noisy with a live band playing. Where we were seated, we could hear the music, but it wasn’t too loud at all. So don’t be worried about dining there during live music nights.

SUMMARY

Overall, I recommend Los Cuates in Sandia Park. While I wouldn’t make a special trip all the way from Albuquerque just to eat there (when there’s four other locations already in Albuquerque), if you’re enjoying a day in the East Mountains or cruising the Turquoise Trail and craving New Mexican food, then it’s worth stopping in.

Also, look at the cool door handles:

I want these on my house.

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