Top 5 Burgers To Eat in Portland Before You Move To Brooklyn (or Austin, or Minneapolis, or Los Feliz or Whatever)

I get a lot of burger based questions, but none more often than -So what's your favorite burger? After 3 years of burger exploration, I think I'm finally ready to answer that oft uttered query, and compile my first "Best Of" list. Let's take a trip down burger avenue AKA memory lane.

5. Best Sunday Afternoon Brunch Burger - BAR BAR

This low key burger is a perfect way to round out a debaucherous weekend. Between 2 moderately dense potato buns is some serious upscale faux fast food paydirt. The supple, cheese swaddled patties, crisp shredded iceberg and thoughtful tomato jam will soak up your residual party juice from last night while giving you the fuel you to continue day drinking. Bonus points for Mississippi Studios being a great place to patio-relax with your hungover self. Click Here For My Original Review
Where: BAR BAR 3939 N. Mississippi www.mississippistudios.com

4. Best Lunch Break Burger- Killer Burger

With a handful of locations to serve your meat hungry palette, Killer Burger is nailing the daily afternoon
burger experience. They have a menu that is equal parts "Oh hell yeah" and " WTF?" with burgers to please even the most dangerously adventurous pallets, that is to say they have a peanut butter bacon burger AND a burger so spicy you are required to sign a waver before ingesting it. Click Here For My Original Review

Where: Flagship-4644 NE Sandy Blvd

3. Best Happy Hour Burger - East Burn

I love this burger. It is some of the best seasoned meat in town, served on a cibatta roll with a quadrillion nooks and crannies for  ultimate juice absorption. Embellished with fresh, hyper green butter lettuce, thinner than paper red onion and tomato so succulent that your first bite will result in maaad tomato ejaculate. The service is stellar, the patio is an oasis, and the basement arcade is a really fun place to deal with your lifelong claustrophobia issues. Click Here For My Original Review

Where:  EastBurn 1800 E Burnside 503-236-2876

www.theeastburn.com

2. Best Burger To Feed To Your Out-Of-Town Buddies- Slow Bar

Consistently on every foodie's top ten Burgers of  Portland list, and with good reason. Slow Bar's Slow Burger is a game changer. The impossibly thick patties are like fleshy cushions, yielding a spectacular arrangement of flavor that seems to grow more complex with each bite. The flagship burger is topped with a ridiculously huge onion ring, but the summer slow burger (shown here) was a masterclass in thoughtful restraint. I await it with baited breath each summer season. I mean, c'mon, look at those pickle slices. They are perfection. Click Here For My Original Review

Where: 533 SE Grand Ave www.slowbar.net

1. Best Burger In Portland- Foster Burger

From the moment I first walked into Foster Burger I just had a great feeling that I would be eating the burger to end all burgers that day. And while it's insanely close to Slow Burger in terms of life change-ability, it's comes out ahead for one reason; fatback. Their ground beef recipe is so neck snappingly delicious that I restrict myself to one foster burger a year. For fear of breaking my neck. With a signature burger based on the Australian standard of burgers, topped with pickled beets and a fried egg, Foster Burger is doing something so different, yet so friggin familiar that it borders on crazy magic. Also, they framed all of their worst Yelp reviews and that's funny to me. Click Here To Read My Original Review
Where: 5339 SE Foster Road  www.fosterburger.com

EastBurn and The Server Of My Dreams

OVERVIEW; While trying to catch an episode of Portlandia on the patio of this fine establishment, an attractive, attentive and altogether amazing sever made sure we were plugged in, volume up and front row seated. Meanwhile, I saw plate after plate of better-than-bar-food travel past our table. The combination of that angel of a server and the smell memories I had collected while embracing my city's nationally loved quirkiness on the patio's big screen tv had me posted up the very next afternoon for the most beloved of all brunches; the burger beer brunch.

BURGER; Prepare your buds, people. Theses burgers are seasoned with a fervor that treads dangerously into meatloaf territory. But Eastburn's patty walks the line between essential ground beef goodness and heavily seasoned madness so gracefully you will likely question everything you thought you knew about balls of charbroiled beef. Perched on a Grand Central cibatta roll, with infinite nooks and crannies to absorb that heavily flavored beef juice as well as the fresh juice of a hothouse tomato, paper thin white onion and garden fresh butter lettuce, we may have located a little slice of burger nirvana on SE Burnside, y'all.

FRIES; The great house cut taters that we've become so accustomed to in Portland bars. Great flavor, cooked perfectly. Not a mealy, lackluster fry in the bunch.

SERVICE; Remember that fellow I mentioned in the overview?I had the privilege of having him as my afternoon burger server. I can't speak to the other waitstaff, but this guy is the absolute model of a perfect server. Intuitive, witty and personable. I would empty my wallet every day for service so perfect. I wish him the very best in life, and if you've ever had service as perfect as the service I am describing then you know exactly what I'm talking about.

WHERE; Eastburn
1800 E Burnside
Portland, OR 97214
503-236-2876
www.theeastburn.com