El Farolito - El Rito, NM

Posted By Michael Stern on August 26, 2003 4:59 AM

El Rito is a long way from almost everywhere, but the trip to get there is stunning. It is a drive through pure New Mexico, with a landscape of awesome rock formations, sagebrush, and grazing cows. The town is little more than a single street with a general store on one side and El Farolito on the other. It’s a small place, hardly bigger than a house trailer, with seven picnic tables up front and the kitchen in back.

For native New Mexican food, you won’t find a better place at a better price. Chilies rellenos, tacos, enchiladas, and green chile cheeseburgers are featured on the menu (which also offers ordinary hamburgers and hot dogs for chilephobes). The green chili is especially excellent: a luxurious stew of bite-size pieces of pork, tomato, and slivers of ultrahot green chile. Red chile is more a sauce, nothing but pureed chilies and spice; and it is used on burritos and enchiladas. But if you’d like a “bowl of red” as a meal, the Trujillos will add beef and/or beans to create a thick, powerhouse stew.

We cannot resist El Farolito’s Fritos pie. Dominic Trujillo, son of founders Carmen and Dennis, told us that some customers who get their pies to go have the corn chips packed separately so they don’t get too soft by the time dinner is ready to eat. The way it normally comes from the kitchen, there is a thick layer of relatively mild-mannered red chili spread atop a foundation of corn chips, the chili garnished with melting shredded cheese, lettuce and tomato. It’s the whole food pyramid in a single bowl!

Thanks to Michelle Sullivan for tipping us off to this great find.

Overall Rating

Fritos Pie

Sopaipillas

Green Chile Cheeseburger

Green Chile

Chilies Rellenos

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Posted By Michael Drummy on October 5, 2011 12:19 PM

This place is across-the-board fantastic! The people are the nicest on the planet.

Overall Rating

Fritos Pie

Chilies Rellenos

Sopaipillas

Green Chile Cheeseburger

Green Chile

green chili cheese fries

Tamale

red chili cheese fries

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Posted By W H on August 27, 2011 10:10 PM

This is the place, fairly close to the Center of the Universe. We stopped on the way home with a trunk full of Chimayo green. Yes, we are lucky enough that El Rito is pretty much on the way home.

Jeri had a relleno smothered in red, and the red chili cheese fries. My vegetarian, who is often left in the cold on my GCCB quests, was in heaven. On the other side of the table, I considered the green chili cheese fries. The succulent bits of pork ensured that a focus on the green chili stew would require a future visit.

The GCCB: not one of the ingredients was of the highest quality. The burger, chili, cheese, bun, onion, lettuce, mustard, mayonnaise: each was merely adequate. But the whole was indeed greater than the sum of the parts. Perfection on a bun. This is the Holy Grail. Welcome home pilgrim.

Overall Rating

Chilies Rellenos

Green Chile Cheeseburger

red chili cheese fries

green chili cheese fries

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Posted By Andrea Still on March 1, 2008 2:10 PM

I visited El Farolito after reading the reviews here, and going on the concurrent raves of my Realtor; it is hands down her favorite New Mexican place, especially for the green chile cheeseburger.

Kind of a letdown, though; the chiles are bland and clearly canned, and the cheeseburger is tasty but WAY too big, making the chile to cheese to burger ratio way off. The bun is pasty and doughy, heavy almost. Fries are good though. Had a tamale (I'm partial to them), but it came swimming in a weird broth and was pretty greasy.

Still, the roadside allure quotient was definitely high. Maybe it was just an off day. Could have been the time of day too, but I think they could definitely hit the "refresh" button; everything seemed tired.

Overall Rating

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