 Second Street Brewery At The Railyard
Always a delight to be back in Santa Fe for any reason, be it simply vacationing, visiting friends, or criss-crossing the country under an array of aliases and accompanying wigs in an attempt to stay a few steps ahead of your creditors. I was … uh, vacationing!
Hankering for the green chile cheeseburger and local beer that are my due whenever I'm in the Fe, I'd popped in to Second Street Brewery, a local favorite. They have a couple other locations, but I went to the one in the Railyard, figuring it'd be good for people watching, and, you know, in case I needed to hop a train real quick-like. I sat on the patio.
Lovely place, all around. The Railyard is a little more fancy-pants than other parts of town I'd been to, with a definite tourist vibe, but it's so undeniably nice you don't really mind. Looking at the menu, I decided I couldn't not go with "The Original Alien Burger," a concoction too cuckoo to pass up. It did indeed check my box for a green chile cheeseburger—technically. But calling it that is like calling the Batmobile a car, 'cause this thing is decked out to a high degree of culinary insanity.
Angus beef, chile-jack cheese, smoked bacon, stout queso, Hatch green chile, crispy fried onions, guacamole, and chipotle mayo, and then topped with a whole blue corn-dusted chile relleno!!! Now, I don't especially go for gigantic "stacked" burgers on the whole, because much of the time they're overly huge and over-the-top just for the sake of being that. But this one, while just short of unwieldy, is quite impressively constructed and manageably edible, though you may want to do some mouth-Kegels beforehand.
A couple of bites into the burger, I noticed a stout older man walking toward the Second Street patio from across the courtyard. No way! It was G.R.R. Martin! I knew he lived in Santa Fe, but didn't expect him to just be roaming around like any other random Joe Schmo. Strangely, he proceeded to walk right up to where I was sitting and started talking to me about "Game Of Thrones." I was flattered, of course, but I must admit after a few minutes it wasn't that much different from talking with anyone else about "Game Of Thrones." Okay, okay, George R.R., I get it, "Game Of Thrones" is amazing. Terrific world-building, nice job! Glad you're proud of it. Yeah, I know, everyone says the TV show isn't as good. Totally. Oh, no doubt, I'm sure the books are much harder to write.
Then shit got weird! What the hey?!
In a matter of seconds, G.R.R.'s body fell away, revealing a terrifying reptilian creature emitting a high-pitched, garbled tone.
And just like that—motherfucker ate the rest of my Alien Burger!
And before I could even call over the manager, a vortex opened up and the creature disappeared into it with a flash of blinding light and a deafening hell-scream.
Only in Santa Fe. Oh, and I still had to pay for the goddamn burger, in case you were wondering!
Review by Wimpempy Tarlisle, May 2018 |
