Steve Harris stared down the massive hamburger smothered in spicy green chiles and American cheese piled atop a fluffy brioche bun. Gazpacho Restaurant’s green chile burger was his latest challenge in his quest to eat and rank all of the hamburgers in the Animas Valley.
So far, Harris has eaten at 19 of the 38 establishments that serve a hamburger in and around Durango. The goal is not so much to find the best burger in town, but rather to give a comprehensive rating to each based on seven criteria: patty size, patty quality, bun quality, topping quality, sides, service and atmosphere.
“You never know what somebody’s going to like and somebody’s not going to like,” he said. “Whenever someone asks me what the best burger in town is, I usually stutter. How many times have you heard somebody say, ‘This is a book that changed my life.’ And you read it, and you go, ‘What? Really?’”
Though his goal is to eat every burger being served for lunch in Durango, he said, it’s more about rediscovering his home and connecting with friends along the way.
“If I’m not on the burger tour, I generally don’t eat burgers,” he said. “Lunch is where I visit with people. It’s about sharing your food, because a lot of people are busy, and I don’t go out in the evening hardly at all anymore.”
Harris invites friends to join him for a burger every time he makes a stop on his tour, he said. It gives him the chance to slow down, explore a new spot and spend quality time with the people in his life. One of the most important criteria for his ranking system is the restaurant’s atmosphere, which scores higher if he can sit and enjoy his comrades’ company.
“When I go with my friends, I want to be able to visit,” Harris said. “You don’t want to stand up where it’s really noisy. You want to have some place where you can sit down and talk, usually take an hour or so to have lunch. You never know what we’re going to talk about.”
Several of Harris’ buddies joined him June 26 at Gazpacho as he checked its green chile burger off his list. Steve Parker, who has known Harris for over 40 years and had come for lunch, loved the idea.
“Steve said we ought to rate these places,” Parker said. “The rules are to enjoy the burger and be objective about it. Otherwise, there are no rules.”
This is Harris’ second burger-specific tour of Durango. In 2017, he was inspired to visit all of the restaurants serving a burger for lunch that he could walk to from his engineering office near City Hall.
“There were 33 places that I could walk to,” he said. “So I did the same thing I’m doing now. I had an email list of people that say, ‘Well, let’s go here at this time,’ and I rated them all on a spreadsheet.”
Eight years went by, he said, and his friends who had joined him on his first burger tour reached out and said it was about time to do another one. He agreed, though he soon discovered, Durango’s burger scene is different now.
“I quickly realized that of the 33 places I could go to last time, there were less than 20 left after COVID,” he said. “So this time around, I did any place in the Animas Valley from Glacier Club down to the McDonald’s at that new roundabout.”
Harris said he missed some of the old burger-slinging establishments that are not around after the pandemic – like the Irish Embassy and The Palace. But, he said, many of the restaurants serving burgers today are still good.
The reason Harris chose burgers to be the culinary muse of his tour through Durango was because they are a quintessential part of American culture, he said.
“Burgers are ingrained in America’s soul,” he said. “They’re comfort food.”
Poetics aside, the most important part of Harris’ tour is just getting a group of old friends together to laugh, reminisce, poke fun at each other and enjoy a meal. Harris plans to have eaten at every restaurant by the end of the year, and to make his finished spreadsheet available to everyone.
sedmondson@durangoherald.com
