Location, location, location. They say it's critical to a restaurant's survival. They also say you need to be open more than four days a week and have space to serve more than a
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handful of customers at a time. But "they" probably haven't sunk their incisors into a juicy hamburger roughly the size of a Frisbee at Bobcat Bite. This burger joint on the edge of the desert has survived for more than 50
years on meat, if not merits, alone. You have to be doing something right if you've been featured in a GQ article titled "The 20 Hamburgers You Must East Before You Die" and scored a cameo in the independent documentary
Hamburger America
. The Bite will do you right. The menu isn't extensive by any stretch of the palate-burgers and steaks with a little potato salad garnish on the side-but you don't need a 20-page dining dossier when you can make a green chile cheeseburger or New York strip steak that would have a vegan questioning his gastrointestinal affiliation. Yes, Bobcat Bite is small. Yes, it's only open four days a week. And no, it doesn't have any traditional french fries to complement the thick discs of hand-ground beef. But what it lacks in access it makes up in taste, value and atmosphere. Word has it the restaurant got its name from the days when wild felines used to scamper down from the surrounding hills to be fed scraps behind the restaurant. Bobcats never had it so good.
420 Old Las Vegas Hwy., 983-5319.
Lunch and dinner Wednesday through Saturday. $
Santa Fe Reporter