In an effort to support our local restaurants in and through the COVID pandemic we tried to be creative and come up with a fun campaign to help these businesses continue on even when indoor dining was not an option.
Hatch, NM is the Chile capital of the WORLD!
As our state went RED, we thought let’s go GREEN! And that is where our Green Chile Campaign originated. Many of our local restaurants have at least one green chile dish to offer and we wanted to help them capitalize on that! Because, why go red when you can go green?! 
Heirloom Acres supported us in this campaign by designing their corn maze around this theme for their pumpkin patch season in October of 2021.
We have continued celebrating our local restaurants while also celebrating one of the best things about New Mexico this past year through a fun variety of local green chile taste tests. In the Summer of 2021, the ladies of the Artesia Chamber of Commerce kicked off the campaign by picking our personal favorites! We then put together a panel of judges from the community to do our first official taste test in the category of Oddest Green Chile recipes. We nervously awaited the recipes a category like this might bring, but ALL of the recipes tasted fantastic!
1 fresh medium sized green chile pod has as much Vitamin C as 6 oranges!
Kith and Kin hit it out of the park with their Green Chile Ice Cream Sandwich! (Sooo much better than it sounds!!)
Subway competed with a delicious Green Chile Chocolate Chip cookie of their own!
Piccolinos shared their very popular Green Chile Bolloco Pasta!
Adobe Rose entered twice with a fantastic and creative Green Chile Salmon Peanut Butter and Jelly and a Green Chile Bloody Mary! WOW, I do not know about you, but I am getting hungry and thirsty!
Hot chile peppers burn calories by triggering thermodynamic burn in the body, which speeds up metabolism.
For our second Green Chile taste test, we thought it would be fun to gather up all of Artesia’s “Newbies” (Our New Mayor Jon Henry, New Head Football Coach Jeremy Maupin, New Librarian Valerie Martin, and New City Councilors Wade Nelson and Dickie Townley) to judge the best Green Chile Enchiladas. Enchiladas were generously provided by La Fonda, Los Agaves, Nina’s, Roadrunner Grill, and Artesia Country Club. What a fun day that was sampling all these amazing dishes!
We are now planning our third and fourth taste tests in the upcoming months for the categories of Best Green Chile Cheeseburger and, of course, Hottest Green Chile! Be sure to watch the Chamber’s Facebook page to follow along in the fun!
Capsaicinoids, the chemical that makes chile peppers hot, are used in muscle patches for sore and aching muscles.
If you are a local restaurant and chamber member, we would love to have you participate in these upcoming taste tests! Not a member? No problem! Simply fill out the application at the back of this magazine or give us a call at (575) 746-2744.
