Blake's Lotaburger is a burger restaurant with 75 locations in New Mexico. The restaurant may look like the standard burger joint but it's far better than standard. Blake's routinely wins cleanest restaurant in both health inspection and local polls. The food is excellent and well worth the relatively cheap price.
The best part about Blake's however is that everything is
made to order. I don't mean made to order like
Burger king where “your”
hamburger may have been made 10 minutes ago. I mean you order the
burger, then watch them cook it on the
grill right in front of you. If one keeps watching then you will see them clean the grill after every burger is cooked.
Blake's has two kinds of burgers. The “Lotaburger” and the “Itsaburger.” The Itsaburger is the smaller of the two varieties. Both burgers come with the standard lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle, and mustard. A nice touch is that the buns are lightly toasted before the burger is assembled.
There are a variety of toppings that can be asked for, cheese, bacon, mayonnaise, etc. The traditional for New Mexico however is the green chili. Double meat is also available upon request and in fact any aspect of the burger may be doubled for a nominal amount.
Fries come in three varieties, small, large, and seasoned. The seasoned fries are the best in my opinion. They are coated in some sort of concoction of delicious spices before being cooked. All of the fries are cooked to order for each meal as well. Meaning that your fries have about 30 seconds of lag between coming out of the grease and being in your hands. Onion rings are also an option but I've never been particularly pleased with the way their onion rings are made. I suspect it's along the lines of sand paintings and whatnot where mistakes are purposely put into them because only god is perfect and man cannot hope to approach the perfection of god, this is why the onion rings are lackluster.
There are other sandwiches available, turkey, chicken,as well as corn dogs. But I've always been satisfied with the burger so I've not tried any of the other menu items. But the other items are somewhat sparse. This allows for them to concentrate on the tasty burgers they are best at making
Eating of a Blake's burger is an experience in itself. The buns are lightly toasted so they have a bit of stiffness to them. The meat is hot and juicy and pleasantly offset by the crisp coolness of the tomatoes and lettuce. I personally hate pickles, but on a Blake's burger they add just the right amount of bite to the sandwich. The seasoned fries when dipped in ketchup add an earthy feel to the surprisingly lofty taste of the the burger. Washed down with an ice cold soda or a milkshake (not a spectacular milkshake but certainly on the high end of fast food milkshakes) it makes for a delicious meal. Add to all this the fact that it is priced equivalently to any of the other fast food burger chains and it's a wonder they exist in NM at all.
futilelords standard order:
Lotacombo:
Lotaburger+double meat
seasoned fries
Large Soda
Chocolate shake
I like to have a few fries with the burger and soda, but then eat the rest with the milkshake, mmm...
Bookreader reminded me of an important point, one that gives the Blake's experience a more unique feel. The people who work at Blake's have at best a marginal grasp of the english language. Meaning that the people who work the counter know about as much english as one would remember say anything from one's 8th grade spanish class. The people who don't work the counter know even less english.
and time marches on...Blake's was involved in pro Prop 8 behavior. As a result of thinking my homosexual friends are deserving of the same rights as me, I can no longer in good conscience eat at Blake's...