The Slopper

Next time you’re in Pueblo, it’s a culinary imperative to make your way to Gray’s Coors Tavern, or The Sunset Inn, or Cactus Flower for a hand-shaped beef patty, dressed with American cheese, placed on a thick slice of slightly charred sourdough bread and baptized with a ladle of spicy green chile. If you read that ingredient list and thought, “That’s not a Slopper!!!” then welcome to the high-stakes world of defining the Slopper.

Depending on your chosen level of Slopper orthodoxy, you need a bun, not bread. Or shredded cheese on top of the bun. Or serve the whole thing open-faced. But no matter which way you order it, make it or serve it, everyone in the Steel City agrees: It should be with Pueblo green chiles.