The Fork: Wanna smash?

Oh, hey, we’ve just been hanging out thinking about smash burgers. Actually, we’ve been thinking about them a lot since January, when the loudmouth who writes the regular food columns for SFR went to Ortiz inside the downtown Hilton (it’s a restaurant) and—we’re paraphrasing here—was all like, “Me never see smash burger on local menu, at least me not see all the time.”

This got our gears turning. Is Santa Fe a smash burger town? Why he no see very often before, and when do he or we see? Also, when the heck did smash burgers appear, and why do people like them so much? Despite being the undisputed voice of a generation, we really only speak for ourselves, but we knew we had to get to the bottom of this (or, at the very least, learn two or three things and then give up because we got caught up in the Cheers episode when Sam submits Diane’s poems to a lit mag under his name to stick it to her; but then you find out he only had the poems because he kept all her love letters. Why don’t we do love letters anymore, America? They were so cute and sometimes hot!

ANYWAY----------->

At Ortiz, that other jerk loved his smashy li’l burger, so we wanted to see whether that fuss was warranted. First, we were like, “Well, this is Santa Fe, where things come to town roughly 10 to 12 years after everyone else is sick of them.” Then we thought about this cool new game called Pogs. You heard of this? It’s wild. But then we went and had the burger at Ortiz, and good lord was it fab.

Then we noticed that micro-concept restaurant Capital Coal Neighborhood Eatery started to serve smash burgers during special times. Then we found out Santa Fe Capitol Grill has one with jalapeños. Heck, even Dr. Field Goods chef Josh Gerwin has served up the so-called Skinny Burger, which is borderline smashy, though we can’t promise Gerwin literally smashes them so much as they’re just not super-duper thick (but they are delicious as eff).

This was all well and good until we stopped to think about it for a second. Smash burgers, like the macaron, are the sort of thing we’d never heard about even a little bit on a Monday and then, by Thursday, everyone we ever met was like, “Oh, do you not know about macarons and smash burgers? Because we’ve all been eating them every day and all the time forever and ever.” And then we took a look around, and there were literally thousands of macaron and smash burger businesses that we swear to Satan weren’t there even 90 minutes earlier.

So here’s what we know:

Though there is some confusion as to who gets the credit for smashing a burger on a griddle and precisely how old the thing might be, the prevailing theory seems to be that the smash burger as we know it was created by this guy Bill Culbertson, owner of a burger joint called Dairy Cheer (it was originally a Dairy Queen, but there was reportedly a dispute of some kind which led to him changing the name to Dairy Cheer, but that’s a story for another day) in the ‘60s.

Word is that Culbertson and/or his crew used a can o’ tomatoes to apply pressure to a burger on the ol’ flat top, leading to more meat surface touching the grill, which somehow meant better flavor. See, it turns out that when a patty is thinner and more of it touches the grill, you get that gooooood caramelization going, baby, and that is wherein the secret of the taste lies.

Then fast food chains started doing it, which is fine and all, but we prefer the local touch of restaurants like we mentioned before.

Everyone was happy.

And that’s it. That’s the three things that happened in the story of smash burgers. The end. But if we could make a statement and a prediction here, we’d say that it’s likely there’s more to the story involving backyard grilling and such, and that we’re gonna see these things on more and more menus. Know what, though? We’re not sad about it. Do you make them? Do you have any tips or tricks? Tell us at thefork@sfreporter.com.

This one’s for the folks who like Pogs.

Also

• The Santa Fe Farmers’ Market has teamed up with fellow Railyard tenant Violet Crown Cinema for a one-off screening of the 2023 documentary Food Inc. 2 from filmmakers Robert Keener and Melissa Robledo. In a nutshell, Keener and Robledo team up with writers Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser to look at today’s food industry. Spoiler alert? It’s probably a tough watch. You can get in on that action at 6 pm on Tuesday, April 9. And you can get tickets here.
• Feels like we were just talking about local pop-up biz Fistful of Butter last week (because we were), and now we know that those sweet, sweet buttery fools have a pop-up at Santa Fe Place (it’ll always be Villa Linda Mall to us) on Saturday, April 6. Text Felecia at (505) 316-1193 if you’d like to learn more and follow the Insta if you wanna see what kind of treats they’re serving up. As for where they’ll be in the mall? Well, maybe text Felecia and find out.
• Ah, Joe’s Dining on Rodeo Road—where diners can feel like kings or queens and where kings or queens can feel like some sort of crazy, cuckoo super-kings and queens. As of Tuesday, April 2, Joe’s had kicked off its 12th Annual Burger Week (we feel the name is self-explanatory, but in case you aren’t hip, it’s a week at Joe’s Dining and it’s devoted to burgers), and that means lower prices on some items. Take the lamb burger, which usually clocks in at $17? It’s $12.99 right now. This is a dine-in only thing, just know that. And if you go in, tell them The Fork sent you. Oh, they don’t know us, we just think it’ll be funny to tell people we don’t know personally that we’re sending people to them.
• The annual Cocktails & Culture Festival from Official Fork Friend/sometimes Fork contributor, Natalie Bovis, aka The Liquid Muse, isn’t even until May 31 to June 2, but we hear tickets are selling so quickly that you might want to get on that, like, soon. If you don’t know what’s what, it’s all about cocktails and culture and tacos and food and eating and drinking tacos and food and culturing with cocktails and tacos and food and also food and cocktails. Learn more here (including about the ever-popular Taco Wars event therein; and you can also get tickets through that link).
• Speaking of Capital Coal (like we were just doing in the intro up above), this Friday, April 5 finds the micro-concept eatery kicking off a special raw bar menu including oysters, Japanese uni (that’s eel, and so good) plus more. If you haven’t already bookmarked the Capital Coal site, what’s wrong with you?
• Did you hear that Hidden Mountain Brewing Co., which was formerly known as Blue Corn Brewery, is going back to its old name, being Blue Corn Brewery? Well, it is. And we salute them, because that name means something around here, man. A very nice employee from over there tells SFR that they’re pretty much just waiting on the signs to come in for it to be official.
• We here at SFR were pretty bummed when chef Randy Tapia moved out of the CHOMP food hall downtown—because it was so good—but our spies (by which we mean our mom, who drove by Tapia’s truck then called us) tell us that he’s re-appeared in food truck form in front of the Eclipse Car Wash at 2271 Cerrillos Road. Tapia’s poke is among the best we’ve had anyplace, and it sure doesn’t hurt that he’s right near the Jesushi sushi truck, where SFR staffers have also been known to eat from time to time. Everyone get over to those trucks and eat some fish, dammit!
• Though our petition to change the name of the James Beard Awards to “The Beardos” seems to have gained very little traction in the food world, we were still pumped to see a number of New Mexico places and names on the finalist list announced earlier this week. What are those names and places? Well, you’ll just have to click here to find out.

Speaking of fish and pizza and guys called Scott...

More Tidbits

• We know The Fork is mostly a goofball affair, but please accept that we are sincere when we say don’t quite know what to do with our feelings about news out of Gaza, where World Central Kitchen officials say that seven aid workers from various countries were killed on Tuesday in an Israeli airstrike. Founded in 2010 by chef Jose Andrés, the World Central Kitchen aims to provide meals to the hungry following natural disasters or, in this case, during war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly described the attack as “unintentional,” adding that “it happens in war,” while WCK CEO Erin Gore described it as “unforgivable.” For now, the organization has paused its operations in Gaza, where experts say famine is practically inevitable.
• As we might have noted before, if there’s a non-Fork food writer out there whom we love as much our La Forkette and The Knoife, it’s Jaya Saxena, whose contributions to Eater-dot-com are many and always fascinating. This time, Saxena tackled the concept of diaspora chefs and their impact on American barbecue. As there’s no killer barbecue in Santa Fe (yeah, we said it—”It was pretty OK,” is not the same as “We waited in line for four hours and we did it with smiles on our faces!”), we find ourselves lusting after the sort of vicarious visions we can achieve via this kind of writing.
• Good news for assholes with more money and time than musical taste—Food & Wine-dot-com has dropped its list of things to eat and drink at Coachella this year. Go wild, trust fund kids, aging tech bros and general pieces of shit of Earth! #BasementShowsForever
• As we have been advised that The Fork is “not bite-sized,” we’ll cut it there. Excelsior!

A totally scientific breakdown of The Fork’s correspondence

In this week’s print edition of SFR, learn a little something-something about pizza champ Oshia Golden, whose Oshia’s at CHOMP is apparently pretty dang good.

Number of Letters Received: 37

*Double smooches!

Most Helpful Tip of the Week (a barely edited letter from a reader):

“Are you sleeping enough, Fork?”

*Not even a little bit at all.

Actually Helpful Tip(s):

“Fish tacos, man.”

*An excellent reminder, thank you!

Out here smashing,

The Fork