The Roasty, Smoky, Spicy, Past, Present, and Future of Southwestern Cuisine

The Thousand Steps Trail in the Franklin Mountains of westernmost Texas— which loom over El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico—is mostly an ordinary ramble through rocky Chihuahuan desert scape and spiny ocotillos. But from the highest point on a clear, calm day there’s one sight that trains your gaze away from these neighboring cities: a rust-brown border fence cleaving the two and snaking southwest as far as the eye can see....