After a surprisingly good unscheduled lunch at D&H BBQ, the RoadFood group reassembled at Rancho Lewis, a Mexican/New Mexican restaurant from John Lewis of Lewis Barbecue. Rancho Lewis feature mesquite-grilled meats, fresh chiles shipped from New Mexico, and many Mexican and New Mexican standards.
Charleston is gentrifying northward, and 10 or 20 years ago a barbecue place in the Rancho Lewis location at 1503 King Street, squeezed as it is between an interstate and the railroad tracks amid industrial and low income areas, might look something like this.
Instead, it looks like this
and has a courtyard like this, graced by a popular brewery.
Things definitely change. If you can leave that courtyard, you stroll into Rancho Lewis past a mood-setting sign
and find a spacious restaurant, with a large bar/seating area and a second larger area for seating. The interior is chile-oriented
as is the food. There’s a salsa bar with a choice of four or five selections that vary, left to right, from very mild and flavorful to very hot and okay. I mixed some of the hot and pretty hot and was well pleased. The chips are excellent. Much of the food involves fresh green chile-spiked familiar Mexican platters, all of which were applauded enthusiastically by the RoadFood group. Mexican platters are not particularly photogenic, but this is a nice one.
I’d like to go back and try some. RoadFood crawls necessarily involve some triage, and I forewent the standards and focused on two standouts. The first was a green chile cheeseburger.
Now that’s a wonderful burger. Just look a that crust, and imagine the smoky flavor from the mesquite grill. Then layer on a some fresh New Mexico green chiles, the very best green chiles in the world, the glory of New Mexico and one of the glories of the United States, right up there with barbecue, country ham, hushpuppies, and bourbon. They just don’t taste as good anywhere in the world. I wallowed in them when we were in New Mexico a couple of years go, and way back when I had a series of cases there on behalf of Navajo and Pueblo voters. Now this is a burger! The fries were fine, the slaw perfunctory, and the jalapeño very good.
My one regret is that Lewis uses mild rather than hot green chiles, the ones that prompt tourist-heavy Santa Fe restaurants to post warnings on their menus. Still, their unique flavor shines through, as it did in the other standout dish, the posole.
Chris ordered this but was disappointed, as he’d expected a meat-loaded posole. Rancho Manuel’s posole was mainly hominy, vegetables, and those superb green chiles. So it fell largely to me and I enjoyed it immensely. So much flavor!
I don’t know where else in the East you can get truly fresh New Mexico green chiles, hot or mild — please tell me if you know of any. They make so much difference in the flavor of Mexican dishes. They’re reason enough to travel to Charleston, as if you needed more reasons, and try some. Then start planning a trip to Santa Fe.
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