A Word About Portland Burger Week

THIS IS HAPPENING; And it's awesome. And there's no way I'm going to be able to eat all of them in a week (I keep telling myself-don't be a hero).
Burger Week is sponsored by The Portland Mercury, one of the fine weeklies of PDX.  It's a 7 day celebration of the burger, the burger arts, and the burger aficionado  The participating restaurants have invented some of the most interesting $5.00 burgers this town has ever seen, and many of the joints have appeared on this blog- crazy right!? I feel like it's my birthday or something.

Participating Restaurants:
Alberta Street Pub (1036 NE Alberta)
Ate-Oh-Ate Hawaiian Restaurant (2454 E Burnside)
Club 21 (2035 NE Glisan)
Dick's Kitchen (3312 SE Belmont)
Foster Burger (5339 SE Foster)
Pause (5101 N Interstate)
Rockin' Robyn's Sassy Burger (5221 NE Sandy)
Slow Bar & Slow Burger (533 SE Grand / 2329 NE Glisan)
Skyline Burgers on Broadway (2200 NE Broadway)
TILT - Handcrafted Food, Built For The American Workforce. (3449 N Anchor)
White Owl Social Club (1305 SE 8th & Main)
Widmer Brothers Gasthaus Pub (955 N Russell)

Yeah, that's a long-azz list, but you can rely on me eating atleast 3/4ths of it. As of this blog, I'm 2 down, 10 to go. Can she do it? Will she GO ALL THE WAY?!
(Full disclosure- I'm probably going to tap out at 8)
Check back for daily burger updates, and get on my FB & instagram game for real time burger updates

Portland Burger Week Edition! Spam Musubi Burger at Ate-Oh-Ate

Do People go to Hawaii for the food? I don't know, but if I had to guess, I would say...maybe? That was the bottom line of the convo I was having as I crossed the threshold into Ate-Oh-Ate. Having heard fantastic thangs about their spam and egg stacked contribution to Burger Week, I was pondering my limited experience with the cuisine, admittedly confined to loco moco and weirdly sexy island fruit. Oh, and spam.

BURGER; For anyone who rolled their eyes at a burger with fried spam on it (I was one of you), know this; spam abso-effing-lutley rivals bacon as a deliciously logical burger topper. This burger was a testimony to balance of flavor. A voluptuous patty, precisely perched on a tailor made, aioli dressed brioche. Two thick slices of grilled spam and an over easy egg that broke with the gentlest nudge, enveloping the tightly constructed burger in a veil of smooth, velvety yolk. I had the pleasure/displeasure of arriving at the tail end of a massive rush, which resulted in about an hour wait- the consequence being a burger patty that was seasoned and pressed to order. As far as I'm concerned, I got there just in time.

FRIES: Noope. But macaroni salad is a decent beach-bbq-throwback side dish. I could almost hear the waves crashing (not really).

SERVICE; It's day two of Burger Week and they're overwhelmed, but dang if they're not pulling off with some serious grace. Maybe it's an island thing.

WHERE; 2454 E Burnside St, Portland (503) 445-6101 ate-oh-ate.com

Portland Burger Week Edition! Kimcheese Burger at Foster Burger

 I've Waited My Whole Life for This Week: With burger week celebrations exploding around the country, it was only a matter of time before Portland, with it's acres and acres of organic farro and frise fed bovine, got behind the trend. The crazy business that is Portland Burger week will see all types of madness manifesting in $5 dagwood-esque, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink burgers. Today, we beat the rush to Foster Burger, a blog favorite, to go nuts on an illogical fusion burger that somehow made me reconsider my idea of illogical fusion burgers.

BURGER; When venturing out to revel in the spoils of burger week, one must remember that, for 5 bux, you might not be getting the burger monstrosities that you may be accustomed to getting at these participating restaurants. For example, my affection for Foster Burgers thick, succulent patty was defeated when I realized that the kimcheese burger was a mere 4oz patty. No biggie, except that the cook at that size will be medium well, not a huge thumbs up for we who enjoy a pinker patty. Also, the inspired accouterments, a heap of locally made kimchi, mildly spiced cilantro spread, thick cut applewood bacon, glut of cheddar cheese and sky-high sesame brioche overwhelmed the smaller patty, and all that delectable foster beef just sorta disappeared beneath so many strong flavors. Now, that said, this was still easily one of the best five dollar burgers i have ever eaten in my life (I mean, seriously? Kimchi and cheddar? I can't even...) and I can only hope that Foster Burger recreates the insanity that is the kimcheese burger with their signature Foster Burger Patty in the near future.

FRIES: I've mentioned in previous reviews how solid Foster Burger's fries are, so I decided to really set off burger week in style, with a big-azz plate of poutine. I stand by my previous assessment- the fries are solid- but I made a mistake ordering a bowl of disco fries AND an insanity burger. Learn from me, just get some coleslaw instead. Cabbage is excellent for digestion.

SERVICE; Be gentle, it's burger week, they're moving as fast as they can.

WHERE; 5339 SE Foster Road Portland fosterburger.com

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

The Tardis Room; A Bar Full of Inside Jokes I Will Never Understand

What is a Tardis Even? Apparently it has something to do with Dr Who, the long running BBC sci-fi series with an enthusiastically dedicated fan base. The Tardis - and I'm sure I'm going to get corrected in the comment section on this one- is a time machine shaped like a phone booth and The Tardis Room is a Dr. Who fanboy's bedroom shaped like a labyrinthine bar in North Portland. It's a strange mashup between niche-theme bar and old timey fish and chips pub but despite the amount of black lights, it's not as clumsy at it might seem. An abject curiosity, yes, but deftly conceived. I never fell into science fiction, and at this point I'm not holding out hope that someday I will, but that didn't stop me from appreciating the amount of weird effort it took to put this bar together. Bottom line - some people are going to love it and never set foot in another bar as long as they live, but I will be fine visiting maybe once or twice a year. Spoiler alert; it won't be for the burger.

BURGER; Since we're already turning the WTF knob to 11, I actually ate a deep fried burger. The whole thing wasn't deep fried, just the patty. The batter was the very same that they use for their brilliant fish and chips, a light flaky masterpiece that, in burger form, was nearly inedible after 5 bites. Though the burger had an interesting depth of flavor, a well seasoned patty and the aforementioned batter, it became an obvious mistake after bite 5 when my dining companions implored me to stop eating it. They could no longer bear the smell. Topped with grilled mushrooms, iceberg, swiss cheese and a smattering of pickle coins, you have to be a brave mofo to ingest this in it's entirety. Otherwise it's just an abject curiosity.

FRIES: Aww yeah. Not just fries, but english style "chips". Thick, fresh cut, and perfectly greasy. A good reminder of what is good about the eats at The Tardis Room, the fish and chips are great, but they should back off of the experimental american comfort food.

SERVICE:  Well, I could go a few ways with this one. I had a fiercely uncomfortable interaction with the server over the course of this visit. I honestly don't think he knew how racist the things he was saying were, because no one ever explained to him WHY certain slurs are racist. I won't go so far as to insinuate that he, or any of the other bartenders or servers are racist, that's crazy. This particular dude just didn't understand the words "That's offensive." I won't go into how weird this got for for me (I'm half black) because this is my burger blog, not my deep social commentary blog.
Just, if you don't like hipster racism, maybe don't sit near the bar.

WHERE: 1218 N. Killingsworth St.  503-232-3344 The Tardis Room on FB

Whatever, Satan. I'm Just Here For The Burger.

Repent Sinner, Put This Burger in Your Face; Church is a new little watering hole on NE Sandy. It's an unassuming storefront, the corner unit of an unassuming little strip mall, stashed in an unassuming area of Sandy Blvd. The whole deal is very drive-by-able. However, after missing the turn for the new Slowburger outpost on 24th and taking the next turn I was all "waitaminnit- lookit that unassuming little corner unit..."-you get it. Enter; Church. The second you cross the threshold, you get a faceful of "big concept". The building is new, but the interior of this bar has been furnished to look like that of an old, country church, possibly one you'd find in the backwaters of Louisiana. It looks, quite literally, as if a church was disassembled, shipped across the country piece by piece, and then (sorta) reassembled in a strip mall so we can get our tongue in cheek sin on. The sacrilege is great, and I love the spot for it. But seriously, when is Portland's penchant for satire going to bite it in the ass? I mean, there's a "confessional" in the bar where anyone can take naked pictures of their junk. Whatever, if Satan had showed up while I was eating I would have been all, "I'm just here for the burger, man."

BURGER; Possibly the most over-thought burger I've consumed in 2013. Gorgeous ingredients, respectably prepared, and beautifully presented. But much like the interior of the bar, painfully high concept. The burger is a perfectly seasoned half pound, cloaked in aged white cheddar and then piled high with an alarmingly tart pickled slaw, a healthy slathering of sweet, smokey house made bbq sauce, and --this is almost flip-- a handful of fried onion straws. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, your typical bar burger. The first bite is a wild ride, full of weird emotions and burger based feels. Therein lies the discord, everything about this place- including the burger- is like a strange harmony, discordant yet mellifluous, traditional yet shockingly nontraditional. Bottom line; This is a delicious burger, but it is not for the faint of mouth.

FRIES: As per usual these days, I went for the mixed greens. However, a side dish of fried okra met the requirement for salty, crunchy burger accompaniment. It's popcorn-like appearance threw me, a bit blonde for a deep fried snack, but overall, quite satisfying. Great bar nosh.

SERVICE: Ladies and gay dudes, read closely; this bar is well stocked with hunky mens. As if the person in charge of hiring took note of every adorable Portland archetype and then hired the best of each one; Vaguely ethnic gentlemen with a well coiffed mustache? Check. Gloriously bearded faux lumberjack? Double check.  Adorably twee choir boy? Check. They are here y'all. Come and look at them.  I doubt they care if you're creepy, I mean, you're drinking in a fake strip mall church for God's sake, I think you'll be forgiven.

WHERE: 2600 NE Sandy Blvd. Portland. http://www.churchbarpdx.com/

Lunch in the Very Real Bar of an Imaginary Hotel

Snow, Insanity and Lloyd Not Included
The Central Hotel was not very long ago a dive bar called St John's Pub or something. I went to a dancehall party in their back room a couple of times and it was the most black people I've ever seen converged outside of church since I moved to Portland. This historic building, the center of St Johns' charmingly antique downtown area has seen a few inhabitants over the past decade. As it stands, it is very much the dive bar of it's recent past, with a fresh coat of paint and new stemware, however the owners are working towards rebuilding the historic building back into it's former glory as The Central Hotel. The plans are grandiose to be sure, and it will be no small feat to build a multi level, ultra modern hotel in the middle of itty bitty St Johns. Well, as long as the cafe serves burgers I'm all good with it.

BURGER: A half pound of grass fed northwest natural beef on a lightly toasted grand central sesame brioche bun. With a few healthy leaves of butter lettuce, slices of tomato, red onion and  a slathering of mayonnaise (aioli? are we still calling it that?) The burger was beautiful, carefully constructed and  lit by a soft St Johns sunset filtered through an IPA. It's arrival was a bit of a swoon moment hampered only by the gut feeling that it was arriving much to soon to be medium rare. And then I bit into it, and my fear was confirmed. Just south of rare, just north of edible. Look,  I like a bit of the gore, but that shit needs to be cooked too. Halfway through the burger I had given up on the idea that at some point my tongue would hit paydirt of medium rare meat. HOWEVER, the potential for this burger was astounding. Just 3 more minutes on the grill would have guaranteed full marks. The meat was nicely seasoned and of high quality, and all the accouterments were on point. Crazy what can go down in 3 minutes, amirite?

FRIES; Run of the mill shoestrings with  a dash of kosher salt. No big whoop. I appreciate the tiny paper cup of ketchup because I know someone thought "Hey, you know what would class-up this plate? A paper cup half full of ketchup!"

SERVICE; I kid you not, as we were leaving the bartender/host/apparent owner called out to us, "If you have any investor friends looking for new projects tell them about us!" That would have been charming had she not said it to every patron that had left before us. After five or six good natured laughs it just seemed kinda sad. Kid friendly during daytime hours.

WHERE: 8608 N Lombard St. Portland. www.centralhotelstjohns.com