Big Jim Chili

Sooner or later all chile lovers end up at the Hatch Chile Express in Hatch, New Mexico.

There are just about a million places to buy chiles in Hatch, from the guy sitting by the side of the road selling 25-lb. bags to all the farmer’s stands up and down the Mesilla Valley which runs from Las Cruces to Hatch, nearly 40 miles.

Sooner or later, though, you’ll end up at the Hatch Chile Express which is run and owned by the Lytle family. The Lytles are chile royalty here in Hatch. The current king is Jimmy Lytle who is in his late 60s. His maternal grandfather, Joseph Franzoy, who was from Austria, came to Hatch Valley in the 1920s and began growing peppers to sell to miners in Silver City, New Mexico.

Franzoy had 10 children, all farmers. His daughter, June—Jimmy Lytle’s mother—is, at 88, the last alive. But that’s not really what makes them royalty. That would be Jimmy Lytle’s father, Jim Sr., who developed the most famous chile in the Hatch Valley, the Big Jim. Not that the Lytles have been resting on their laurels ever since. Jimmy and his son, Faron, created the Lumbria and, more recently, the Legacy chile peppers. All sold at the Hatch Chile Express. You have to believe ol’ Joseph Franzoy would be proud.