Cafe continued from page 19 as well as chile-spiked items, from beans and salsa to chips and peanut brittle. Even Dozier’s friends have gotten into the spirit. “I have a buddy who’s a baker, and he made a green chile panettone for me,” he says. Another baked up some green chile chocolate chip cookies, and Dozier himself made a batch of green chile vanilla ice cream. “Some people said it had too much green chile,” he admits, “but I said, ‘No, you can’t have too much.’” In late July, Dozier traveled to New Mexico to watch the Albuquerque Isotopes minor-league team play its annual game un- der the name the Green Chili Cheeseburgers. Green chile is deeply rooted in the culture of that state, and Dozier has spent a lot of time there; he even got married in Santa Fe. But don’t expect him to take sides in the New Mexico green versus Colorado green debate. “If it’s got green chile in it, I like it,” he says. “I get it, people like the rivalry, but there’s a place for everybody’s chiles. There’s no bad chile. There’s only better chile.” One episode in particular proves that a love for green chile crosses state lines, he says, and it began with a bathroom stop while he was driving back to Colorado from a skiing trip in Taos. Just before reaching the Colorado border on Highway 285, Dozier pulled into the parking lot of Chili Line Depot in Tres Piedras, New Mexico. “I had to buy something, and I saw that they had green chile apple pie, so I got a slice, and it was fantastic,” he remembers. Made with pinyon nuts and red chile-spiced apples, it remains “one of my favorite things that I’ve ever had,” he declares. He even got twenty of the pies to serve at his wedding. Now it’s a tradition to eat one with his wife every year on their anniversary — but that was a challenge in 2020. Dozier emailed Chili Line Depot and offered to pay to have one shipped to Bailey, where they’d be cel- ebrating, and the shop’s owners, Deb and Gill Grades, agreed. But as the anniversary date got closer, there was no word on the pie. “Two days before our anniversary, I hear from Deb, who says, ‘I’ve got this guy, Big Bill, he’s trucking out of Alamosa, and I think he can drop the pies off to you,’” Dozier recalls. But then Deb took things even further. “She said, ‘Never mind, maybe my husband and I will just drive them ourselves.’” And that’s exactly what they did, much to Dozier’s disbelief. “She drove four pies all the way from New Mexico to Bailey, and we got to meet Deb and Gill,” he says. “I just fell in love with that restaurant. It’s the kind of place you don’t see very often these days.” Dozier is currently working through the lo- gistics of getting his daily green chile fi x while road-tripping to Washington state to visit his in-laws, but he’s optimistic that he can fi gure it out, even if it means opening the bottle of green chile wine he picked up in New Mexico — something he’s not super-excited to try. “It’s a ‘Break in case of emergency’ thing,” he says. Assuming he makes it through that trip and continues to eat green chile every day through December 31, will he take a break? “Maybe I’ll take a week or two off, but I don’t know if I really want to,” Dozier concludes. 22 Email the author at [email protected]. AUGUST 11-17, 2022 WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | LETTERS | CONTENTS | westword.com
