In this line, on Via España near where Via Argentina ends, there were about 25 people ahead of me. It was a lunchtime crowd, largely composed of people who work in the area's stores, hotels, banks and offices, taking advantage of Hamburguesas Rancheras's offer of a hamburger and a medium-sized Pepsi for $1.

Though it had more people in it, this line moved much faster than the ones at McDonald's and Burger King down the street. Here you can get a double burger and you can add cheese, but you can't get a diet soda and there are many fewer options than the competition offers. This is economical assembly line food for the masses, brought to you from a string of trailer stands by the people who used to have the contract to provide beef for McDonald's.

Surely the folks at Mickey D's must have had regrets about ending their relationship with the Mangravitas family, which also runs the Casa de la Carne supermarkets and the Mangrafor meat and seafood packing and importing company. Health and fire inspectors have been called in to harass, disparaging rumors have been whispered and derogatory daily newspaper reports contrived, but Hamburguesas Rancheras meets the standards and is giving the US-based hamburger franchise chains stiff competition.

So how does their product stack up from a junk food junkie's point of view? Can it compare to the McDonald's deliciously artery-constricting Quarter Pounder with Cheese, Wendy's oozing ultra-cholesterol Triple or my favorite heart attack special, the Burger King Double Whopper with Cheese?

Hamburguesas Rancheras serves up a burger that seems a bit leaner and somewhat less salty than the competitors' fare. (No, I didn't take it to an independent laboratory to be separated and shredded and centrifuged and measured. I gave it the taste test, not the Consumers Union workover.) What you get is a substantial piece of meat on a fresh bun with a rather standard set of garnishments and condiments, with Pepsi to wash it down, at a price that clobbers the competition. You don't get clowns, crowns, plastic toys, slick international ad campaigns designed to make children whine, or a place to sit.

Hamburguesas Rancheras meets my taste test. I got a reasonable lunch at a reasonable price, and I didn't come down with Mad Cow Disease. ("How can you tell?" you might ask. Well, OK --- the madness may have been there in the first place, but I haven't found myself walking in circles since my encounter with Hamburguesas Rancheras.)

How much room there is in the capital's lunch market is an extremely difficult question to answer --- all the restaurants that have closed during the economic crisis, recent sweeps by authorities that have shut down many foreign-run downtown kioskos and the hostile moves that greeted Hamburguesas Rancheras's entry into the competition suggest that from the empanada lady and the guy who grills meat on a stick through the fast food chains all the way up to the classiest restaurants, the number of viable niches is finite and far less than the number of people who want to fill them. But I think that Hamburguesas Rancheras has created a space that it's likely to occupy for a long time.

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