“The green chile cheeseburger is something that in the Southwest—out in New Mexico and even in Texas, Oklahoma, and California—is all the rage. Nobody in Atlanta was serving a Hatch chile cheeseburger.

“That’s really the main ingredient. It’s not a really cheffy burger. Most of the ones out west, they’ll just put ketchup and mustard on them. Nobody does it super fancy. It’s just about the quality of the green chilies. At first I was importing them from a source in New Mexico—I still do import them, but thankfully my distributor is able to get them now, because I was having to go to the airport once every few weeks and pick up these giant frozen bricks of green chilies at the Atlanta airport.

“It’s really simple. I just wanted the flavor of the green chilies to come out. We put on some grilled onion and some New Mexico green chilies, and top that with Pepper Jack cheese, and serve the burger with some lettuce, and that’s it. We don’t even put any sauce on there. If the customer wants to do that, they can customize it however they want. But for us, to let that New Mexico hatch green chile shine, we keep it really simple.

“We use a blend of chuck and brisket for the patty. We found that the fat content in the brisket really helps keep the burger nice and juicy. We do a lot of volume, so sometimes it’s hard to control temperatures; we don’t even offer our burgers rare or medium-rare, because the patties are only a quarter pound, so it’s pretty hard to cook that burger to a very specific temperature. But even at medium-well, with that brisket and its fat content, the burger comes out juicy, no matter what. I think that helps us maintain the consistency of the good, juicy burger every time. We just put salt and pepper on it, and that’s it.”

—Alex Brounstein

Owner, Grindhouse Killer Burgers