IT’s Cinco de Mayo, and that instantly gets me thinking Mexican food. There is no Mexican dish more Denver than green chile.
Not the thin, bright-green New Mexico version (no offense to Albuquerque). Not the chunky Texas chili with beans. Denver’s green chile is its own animal — thick, gravy-like, often orange-hued, pork-studded and ladled generously over burritos, fries, burgers and anything else that holds still long enough to get smothered.
Food writer Gustavo Arellano, author of “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America,” has labeled the style “Den-Mex” — a distinct regional cuisine that developed alongside the city’s Mexican American community and diverged enough from its New Mexico and Sonoran roots to deserve its own name…