Out to Lunch

Author Rating:

Food:
Price:
Service:
Atmosphere:
Overall:

Overall Rating:

Latest Additions:

10/5/07:		AmerAisa & Sumo Sushi
1/31/07:		Slate Street Cafe
1/29/07:		Yanni's Mediterranean Bar
1/21/06:		2000 Vietnam
1/21/06:		Siam Cafe
11/21/05:		Bun Huggers
10/4/05:		Cafe Miche
10/4/05:		Socorro Springs
9/24/05:		Sammy's Deli
9/24/05:		Acosta's Mexican Restaurant

Highest Rated:

	Cafe Miche:	4.2
	I Love Sushi:	4.1
	India Kitchen:	4.0
	Siam Cafe:	3.8
	Socorro Springs:	3.8

Lowest Rated:

K-Bob's Steakhouse:

1.6

Latest Comments:

5/15/08:	Best Burgers
10/4/07:	Slate Street
1/29/07:	We haven't been back.
11/30/06:	hi jp
11/30/06:	hi
10/16/06:	Wow!
8/8/06:	good home cooking
8/8/06:	I think the Manny's Buckhorn the best
8/8/06:	good food
8/8/06:	THE BEST EVER

The Owl Bar

(Download a vCard for this restaurant.)

Review:

The Owl Bar is one of the first restaurants I was taken to when I came to Tech, my friends insisting that I had to have a New Mexico green-chile cheeseburger.

Located at the main intersection in San Antonio (NM, not Texas), just a few miles south of Socorro, it’s pretty easy to find. Really, I mean if you miss it you must have been trying to miss it. It’s a pretty decent size for a bar and it has a nice atmosphere with the low-key lighting and ample seating.

It’s a tradition for new customers to leave a dollar-bill marked with their name and home state/town pinned to the wall, and up until a few years ago the walls and ceiling would be lined with them. It was fun to look over the dollars and see all the people who had visited New Mexico and eaten there, and at the end of the year, all the money would be donated to a charity. A couple of years, from what I was told, there was a robbery and the place was cleaned out. Since then, they keep only a few dollars pinned up, preferring to just leave notes.

They advertise “World-famous green-chile cheeseburgers,” and although you can order a few other things on the menu, green-chile hamburgers are what they serve. You can get them made almost any way you want, too.

The burgers are pretty good, and in the years after learning about the place I would go there whenever I got a craving for them. However, anything other than a hamburger is a bit of a gamble, in my opinion. I don’t like their fries; they’re too flaccid and greasy for my taste, so I usually get the cheese nachos. The nachos also help kill the heat of the chile, too.

Sodas are served to you in a can, along with a cup of ice.

Despite looking like a darkened bar, it’s a family restaurant and every time I’ve gone there’s been an ample amount of parents and their children. It tends to be a bit noisy, but not to a level that bothers me or interferes with a conversation at your table.

I know a number of people who rave about the Owl Bar, and the food is fine, but I never felt it was worth the gushing I had heard about it. I always thought it was a nice place to go and eat if you wanted to get out of Socorro for a little bit.

The prices are pretty cheap, too.

In the last year, Heidi and I discovered Manny’s -- another bar just a block to the west of the Owl, and on the other side of the street. They serve green-chile cheeseburgers, too, and the two of us think they’re better than the Owl’s. My advice would be to try both as liking one over the other appears to be purely a matter of personal preference.