Hoppy band at La Cumbre 

True story. I walk up to the bar at La Cumbre Brewing Company, in Albuquerque, New Mexico to order a pint of their prize-winning Malpais stout. A customer at the counter looks over and asks, in a slightly slurred voice, what’s inside the soft briefcase I’m carrying. I say a tablet and a camera. “What do you take pictures of?” “Food, drinks, restaurants, that kind of thing.” “I’m a photographer, too,” he says. “Oh, what kind of photography do you do?” “Dead bodies… for a medical examiner’s office.” The conversation comes to a dead halt. Anyway, my stout (“a meal in a glass”) is heavy on the tongue and somewhat hoppy. The crowd is exuberant, a band is wailing on guitars and a food truck parked outside is selling hot empanadas. It makes you feel good to be alive.

In Roswell, New Mexico—where there’s a UFO museum and alien figures scattered through town—a friendly guy at a hamburger joint tells me his 19-year-old daughter had abandoned her vegetarian upbringing by eating her first ever hamburger the week before at said joint. The owner wanders by and asks the daughter how her burger was. “Best I’ve ever eaten.”

If you’re going to have your first burger, might as well make it a green chile cheeseburger