From KCRW, I'm Evan Kliman and you're listening to good food.

I'll admit that the salt and flower map of California that I was required to make in my fourth grade social studies

class would fail to help me as an adult to locate Quiama. But I became intrigued

when I learned that the restaurant at the Quiama Buckhorn, a renovated roadside hotel near the northern slope of the Sierra Madre Mountains, was resurrecting the ostrich burger, reviewed 30 years ago by Jonathan Gold.

With the added enticement of a pool, I decided a road trip was in order,

up to this high desert town the last weekend of a scorching July.

Our room wasn't ready upon arrival, my traveling companion James and I decided that if we came for the

ostrich burger now was as good a time as any to get it.

Naturally, the new version is a smash burger, and as I was picking at the pickled veg served on the side, I heard the commotion.

Men in varying styles of hats and facial hair spilled into the restaurant from a back room.

Among them was the sheriff with his requisite bushy mustache,

who I would later learn on one occasion

walked into a bachelorette party at the hotel

and was mistaken for the stripper.

With him was a silver-haired man wearing a light camouflage number.

This turned out to be Lee Harrington, a pistachio grower.

I watched them bristle with seriousness among the rest of the men.

Something was up.

But as I have learned to do in small towns that I can't find on a map mind my own business for once

After finishing lunch, we saddled up to the bar as one does on a Saturday afternoon in a high desert town

A boisterous man and a Tommy Bahama shirt who seemed to know everyone in the place

introduced himself as Boomer. Boomer explained he came from Los Alamos via

...