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

Grain & Gristle and A Weird Beer

Wherein the Author Creepily Watches A Stranger Drink A Beer; On a perfectly gray and drizzly Portland afternoon, my friend and I decided to meet up on our lunch breaks for some shenanigans  After having heard an interesting story about a beer made with cow lungs (or something equally disgusting) being served at Grain & Gristle, I knew I had to get in there and watch someone else drink it. Luckily, they also serve other parts of the cow in burger form. And it's quite respectable. Spoiler alert; Neither I nor my companion sipped the aforementioned beer, but I think someone across the bar did.

BURGER; Though seasoned with a heavy hand, this burger was balanced by it's fresh accouterments  I am a huge fan the sweet, fluffy Grand Central brioche buns, I think they are a perfect foil for a well seasoned burger. The fragrant, perfectly cooked patty was adorned with a healthy handful of fresh, crisp green leaf and a few playfully tart sweet pickle coins. That's it y'all, and truthfully, it lacked nothing. In it's simple construction was something reverential. This was not some over-thought "masterpiece", this was a simple burger made with the freshest local ingredients in a manner that allowed each to be truly enjoyed.

FRIES; Alright for serious, I can't be dogging out big plates of burgers AND fries every time I write this blog. I'm trying to live past 35, for shit's sake. So on that note, let me tell you all about this precious little mixed green salad that accompanied my burg; it was a green salad with a vinaigrette  It was tasty. I felt good about myself after I ate it.

SERVICE; Admittedly, this was early during lunch service, so there were really only us and 2 other people there (including the cow-lung-beer drinker), nevertheless, our bartender/server was affable and informative without being imposing or hovering.

WHERE; 1473 NE Prescott, Portland 503.298.5007 www.grainandgristle.com

Portland Burger Blog Goes To Burgerville; Millions Rejoice

I DESPISE FAST FOOD BUT THIS IS OBLIGATORY: We Oregonians love our Burgervilles. They succeed where other fast food franchises nationwide fail. They cook real food. All the meats and produce are locally sourced and it shows. Alongside the popular 5 Guys Burgers and Fries franchise, Burgerville is the best fast food burger Oregon can feed you.

BURGER: Don't get it twisted, it's still fast food. Don't expect any heritage beef patties or sweet brioche buns up in here. However, the supplier list reads like the grocery list of a well-to-do west hills co-op shopper. And despite the fact that this is essentially a fast food franchise, this burger is of damn high quality. Just look at how fresh that green leaf lettuce is, and that tomato is red, not the pathetic pinkish mush round that fast food burgers rarely even include on their burgers.

FRIES: Thicker and more substantial than typical fast food fries, but fast food fries nonetheless. They serve their purpose well.

SERVICE: Adorably teenage in most cases. It's fast food for craps sake. I'm only writing this review to show other burger snobs that Burgerville is legit.

WHERE: Multiple locations throughout Oregon and Washington. www.burgerville.com

The Cat Who Made Me Hate Burgers For One Night

I NEVER WANTED TO PUNCH A CAT SO HARD IN MY LIFE:  After a lovely night of wandering around hungry, my companion and I thought we might be able to recreate  the brunch magic we'd experienced earlier at The Country Cat. Let me tell you why I will never ever ever ever eat there for dinner again. NEVER EVER EVER. And also I hate cats from the country now.

BURGER: A huge, thick, ridiculously seasoned ball of over cooked, chewy meat. A salt bomb of massive proportions. All beef flavor was lost in a hideous cloud of garlic salt and msg. I asked for a medium rare burger and received a hard beef softball. I regret even talking about burgers in this tone...let's move on.

FRIES: I opted for the onion rings which were a greasy farce, a breaded deception. My fingers were pruning with the residual grease. Unhappiness, your name is Country Cat Burger and Onion Rings.

SERVICE: Better than you. Regardless of who you are. They're better, Deal with it. On a side note. I was here on a busy Friday night, and having experienced a mostly radical brunch here, I was let down. But that's just my experience. By all means, go enjoy their phenomenal bloody marys and breakfast potatoes. JUST NEVER GET THE BURGER.

WHERE:7937 Southeast Stark Street, Portland, OR

(503) 408-1414 ‎ · thecountrycat.net