Local Flavor at Chili Hills

Words and photos by Clarke Condé

East Mountain Living

A small bell over the door chimes a greeting to a new customer walking in, but the true welcome comes from owner Debbie Goss at Chili Hills restaurant in Edgewood. “Hi there. Come on in and have a seat,” she says. There is a genuine warmth in her voice, backed by a philosophy that infuses everything she does. That much became clear from my brief time spent across the table from Goss on a Thursday afternoon in her restaurant. 

For upwards of 14 hours a day, Goss guides a staff of around 40 between the two Chili Hills restaurants, one in Edgewood where she spends the lion's share of her time, and the larger one in Moriarty where her husband of 46 years mans the helm. The philosophy behind the place started our conversation soon after I sat down. “Our restaurants are a place of ministry,” Goss explains. “We want people to understand that when they come in there's no judgment. We're going to give you love, we're going to feed you well, but we're not here selling food. We're here selling the atmosphere, the experience, the opportunity just to relax and take a minute.”

The history of the two Chili Hills restaurants starts with the one in Edgewood back before recent memory with the building itself.  Goss says, “At one time this was a little grocery store, it was a school and then it was a Shell station.” Somewhere around 2003 Ralph Hill took the place from something slightly more than a burrito stand and made it into the bonafide restaurant, Chili Hills. 

The first thing to understand is how the restaurant got its name. “Chili Hills” is a name that can cause a kneejerk reaction from New Mexicans, especially those grammarians with a “chile” versus “chili” sensitivity. Rest assured, the origin of the name is as genuine a product of New Mexico as our homegrown peppers, but it does take a bit of explaining. 

“Chili Hills restaurant itself was started in December of 2003,” declared 18-year veteran employee Amanda from three tables away from where I was having a conversation with Goss. Amanda was busily polishing silverware, folding napkins or possibly refilling salt shakers and did not pause her restaurant work to explain the history of the place. I got the impression that there is a collective fluidity to the dialog here at Chilli Hills between tables, customers and employees. The story she relayed not only explained the origin of Chili Hills itself, but also the origin of its unusual name.

It seems that the original owner, Ralph Hill, was a member of a group called the Single Action Shooting Society (SASS). This is a local club of people that dress up like they are in the Wild West and have shooting competitions on the weekends. Everyone in the club evidently had a Wild West-esque alias that they made up as evidenced by the masthead of their club journal, The Cowboy Chronicle, which included staff writer Yuma Jack and advertising manager Square Deal Jim, all under the direction of Editor-in-Chief, Skinny. Within the group, Ralph Hill was known as “The Chili Cowboy.” 

As Amanda explained, Hill took part of his SASS alias and merged it with his own last name creating “Chili Hills.” Now the whole thing was starting to make sense. Hill ran Chili Hills for the better part of a decade before Debbie and her husband of 46 years, Wes, bought the Edgewood restaurant in 2010 as a retirement project. They liked and kept the name, then opened the Moriarty restaurant in June 2012. She laughs when I ask how her retirement is going.

The food at Chili Hills is a mix of New Mexican and that from some of the other 49 states. The first thing to notice about the menu is that it is enormous. “We serve breakfast all day,” Goss says. “The whole menu’s open all day long.” It is a tall order keeping the kitchen running with a full menu all day but it is an important aspect of the restaurant for Goss. “We're not gonna let you go away hungry,” she says.

The menu itself has evolved over time, but Goss makes a point of keeping it fresh, with fresh, not frozen chuck for the burgers, house-made buns and chicken fried steak that fills the whole platter. Then there are the mashed potatoes. “A lot of places will say ‘Yes, our mashed potatoes are homemade’ and they're really creamy and smooth. Not us. We beat the lumps back in and say, ‘you stay there.’” After a meal, a display case full of deserts beckons. “My cakes and pies are all fresh, homemade,” says Goss. “They're my mama's recipes. My grandma's recipes. My recipes.” 

Goss says the differences between the two restaurants is pretty minimal, with the same food and the same standards. Like many restaurants across the country, Goss says that she has struggled with staffing shortages. Many of the folks that work at both restaurants have been with them for years, but the pandemic made things a little harder for everyone, including Chili Hills. It was a challenge staying open with both restaurants, but Goss says that the East Mountain community pulled her through. That is likely due in part to the staff which Goss says are all East Mountain people. Nobody has to drive in from far away to work at Chili Hills.

As to the competition, it is clear Goss doesn’t see other restaurants in that way. She says that there is plenty of room for more restaurants in the East Mountains. “I'd love to see other restaurants come out here just to show variety,” she adds. Goss talks about her fidelity to the idea that hard work and perseverance is the way of running a mom and pop business in a community that she calls “the backbone of America.” It’s pretty hard to argue with that.

Charity comes naturally to Goss so on Thanksgiving Chili Hills in Edgewood is closed to customers, but open to family. By family, Goss means everyone living in the community or just passing through. “On Thanksgiving, we do our come-be-family at Chili Hills,” she says. “You may not know the people you're sitting with, but they're your family and you'll get to know 'em.”

For the past seven years, Chili Hills has hoasted all comers to a family-style Thanksgiving meal free of charge. Area businesses and individuals have chipped in by sponsoring tables for $40 each to help pay for the food and volunteers help out with the service. “I know there's a lot of people out here that have no family. They have no place to go. They don't get love. And Thanksgiving is a tough time for them,” Goss says. “People need to know that somebody cares. There's too many people that don't care anymore. There's so many hateful people around. I'm just not that way.”  

Last year Chili Hills fit about 300 people in the Edgewood restaurant throughout Thanksgiving day. This year, she is looking forward to seeing her family (that is, her community) once again on Thanksgiving and sharing a meal with everyone. All, she says, are welcome. 

For now, both restaurants are open from 7am to 9pm most days, with Edgewood closed on Wednesdays and both locations closing at 4pm on Sundays. A grandmother of seven and great-grandmother of two, I asked her about her future plans. “There'll come a day when we retire, but today is not that day,” she said. “This is in our blood. We don't know anything else.” 

To Goss, it all comes back to her philosophy which has been the driving force of her restaurant since she started and likely long before. To her it is about a spirit of giving that, of course, comes with a food metaphor. “I tell people, at breakfast time you've got your eggs and your bacon. What's the difference? The chicken was involved. She gave you the eggs. That pig gave everything he's got. Meet your bacon. I am the bacon.”