A slopper is a

cheeseburger A cheeseburger is a hamburger topped with cheese. Traditionally, the slice of cheese is placed on top of the meat patty. The cheese is usually added to the cooking hamburger patty shortly before serving, which allows the cheese to melt. Cheese ...

(or

hamburger A hamburger, or simply burger, is a food consisting of fillings—usually a patty of ground meat, typically Ground beef, beef—placed inside a sliced bun or bread roll. Hamburgers are often served with cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles ...

) served smothered in

red chili Chili peppers (also chile, chile pepper, chilli pepper, or chilli), from Nahuatl ''Aztec cuisine, chīlli'' (), are varieties of the fruit#Berries, berry-fruit of plants from the genus ''Capsicum'', which are members of the nightshade family ...

green chili Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by a combina ...

or chili sauce. Sloppers generally include grilled buns and are often topped with freshly chopped onions and sometimes

french fries French fries (North American English), chips (British English), finger chips ( Indian English), french-fried potatoes, or simply fries, are '' batonnet'' or ''allumette''-cut deep-fried potatoes of disputed origin from Belgium and France. Th ...

. They are typically eaten with a fork and a knife or spoon. The slopper is served in restaurants and taverns in the

Pueblo In the Southwestern United States, Pueblo (capitalized) refers to the Native tribes of Puebloans having fixed-location communities with permanent buildings which also are called pueblos (lowercased). The Spanish explorers of northern New Spain ...

and

Colorado Springs Colorado Springs is a home rule municipality in, and the county seat of, El Paso County, Colorado, United States. It is the largest city in El Paso County, with a population of 478,961 at the 2020 United States Census, a 15.02% increase since ...

area of

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...

History

One writer determined that the slopper originated in

Pueblo, Colorado Pueblo () is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Home rule municipality, home rule municipality that is the county seat and the List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous municipality of Pueblo County, Colorado, Pueblo County, Colorado ...

in the early to mid-1970s.Navarro, Linda
"Try legendary slopper dish"
. ''The (Colorado Springs) Gazette''. 19 August 2005. FindArticles.com. accessed 12 September 2007. The first restaurant to serve the slopper is undetermined. Some claim that it was first served in Coors Tavern, while others insist that it originated at Star Bar. According to a version of Gray's Coors Tavern's website, the slopper originated there in the 1950s.
12 September 2007. The same site also claims that the name ''slopper'' was derived from a comment by a customer stating that the dish looked like slop. The website attributes the creation of the slopper to brothers Johnnie and Joe Greco, who had previously owned the tavern. Another story has it that the "slopper" was invented by the late Herb Casebeer, owner of Herb's Sports shop who was a "regular" patron of Coors tavern back in the late 1950s to early 1960s. He got tired of having a plain ole Hamburger every day and asked Joe Greco to put a plain cheeseburger in a bowl and smother it with Green Chile sauce topped with a handful of oyster crackers. Casebeer would entertain The "Chief", Harry Simmons, hall of fame basketball coach to sell him sports equipment over many a lunch & Schooner of Coors Beer back in the day. Simmons touted Casebeer's creation as a Pueblo delicacy over the years. Sloppers were featured in a

Travel Channel Travel Channel (stylized as Trvl Channel since 2018) is an American pay television channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, which had previously owned the channel from 1997 to 2007. The channel is headquartered in New York, New York, United S ...

television show '' Food Wars'' episode "Pueblo -- The Slopper" (2010). The show interviewed persons involved in restaurants which serve sloppers, as well as Juan Espinosa, a former editor of the ''

Pueblo Chieftain The ''Pueblo Chieftain'' is an American daily newspaper published in Pueblo, Colorado. The ''Chieftain'' was established in 1868 by Dr. Michael Beshoar, the first doctor in Trinidad, Colorado. Wilbur Fisk Stone and George A. Hinsdale were the fi ...

''. Espinosa discussed the slopper's origin, attributing it to the Greco brothers who owned Johnnie's Coors Tavern from 1935 until 1983 when it was sold to the Gray family. Espinosa said that a customer of Johnnie' Coors Tavern named Herb Casebeer was dissatisfied with the amount of chili on his chiliburger, and to quell Herb, his burger was covered in chili (probably intended as an exaggerated and exasperated maneuver), and it became a delighted new

serving suggestion Serving suggestion is a disclaimer used on food packaging. The phrase is used as legal fine print with a picture of the product. The picture attempts to portray the manufacturer's food in the most favorable or appetizing way possible, sometimes ...

."Pueblo -- The Slopper"
''Food Wars'', Travel Channel, 2010. It is worth noting that John Greco had a son named Joe, his brother Joe Greco had a son named John. The younger John Greco moved to Hawaii many years ago and opened a tavern called "Bubbas Burgers" whose menu still features the Pueblo "Slopper".

References

{{Burgers Hamburgers (food) Cuisine of the Western United States

History

See also

References