A Hamburger Today - AHT: Portland

Canby, OR: Good Days and Bad Days at Frack Burger

2013-05-10T15:45:00Z

[Photographs: Adam Lindsley]

Frack Burger

919 SW 4th Ave., Canby, OR 97013 (map); 503-266-7654; frackburger.com
Cooking Method: Griddled
Short Order: Depending on when you drop by, you'll get either a sterling example of the classic fast food burger or a ho-hum one.
Want Fries with That? Like the burgers, they're inconsistent from one day to the next. But the onion rings are pretty good, as long as you salt them.
Prices: 1/4-pound Single Frack, $3; Double Frack, $4; hand cut fries or onion rings, $2; milkshake, $3

Living in the Pacific Northwest, I am constantly disheartened by this region's lack of understanding when it comes to building a good griddled burger. Outside of Little Big Burger (and to a lesser extent, Five Guys), Portland's cheap burger scene ain't pretty. While our bistro burger scene is alive and well, sometimes I just crave the simple pleasures of thin, well-seared beef patties crowned with school-bus-yellow American cheese and placed between two toasted buns slathered with a "special sauce" that always seems to be some combination of mayo and ketchup. How so many so-called burger joints in Seattle and Portland can get these fundamentals wrong when the international fame of In-N-Out has practically drawn up the blueprints to do it right I will never know, but one thing I do know is this: on a good day, Frack Burger nails it.

"On a good day..." Yes, there's a catch. My two visits to Frack Burger so far have resulted in vastly disparate experiences, but I'll begin with the meal that convinced me it was perfectly fine to drive 30 miles from home for a cheeseburger twice in one week.

Frack Burger offers single ($3), double ($4), and triple-patty ($5) burgers, and the double-patty option provides the best ratio of meat to bun + toppings. Arriving at my table (one of only four in the tiny restaurant), the hand-formed patties gave off a mouthwatering aroma of charred beef, more akin to a grilled burger than a griddled one, and the first bite delivered on that promise of a crisp crust courtesy of the high-heat flat top. Each patty was cloaked in a slice of melted American cheese, reaffirming the axiom that, when it comes to cheese on ground beef, more is more.

Extra crunch came courtesy of the well-toasted bun, which was nearly black around the outer rim, the way I like it. The bottom half of the bun had a healthy smear of Frack Sauce, which to my estimation was the expected ketchup and mayo combination, heavier on the mayo. The sauce lacked the deceptive complexity of In-N-Out Spread, but it did its job. Sliced onions, iceberg lettuce, tomato, and pickles rounded out the remaining toppings, though the pickles were a (free) add-on. Altogether, that first burger reminded me very much of my attempts to recreate the In-N-Out Double-Double (minus the Animal Style) at home. That's a good thing, because my home versions taste pretty darn good, if I do say so myself (thanks, Kenji).

The hand-cut fries ($2) weren't quite as successful, but they were by no means a failure. Some were too soft, as is almost always the case with hand-cut fries, but some had a nice crispness to them, and all were well salted. Bottom line, they tasted as good as an all-around more superior version (and certainly better than what In-N-Out calls fries).

I also sampled the onion rings ($2), which, texturally, I had zero complaints with. The batter formed an audibly crunchy exterior that housed the oh-so-tender onions, but the rings weren't salted. The best time to salt anything deep-fried is straight out of the oil, rather than at your table as is expected here, so hopefully they'll fix this going forward.

I see very little reason to ever pass up the chance to try a new milkshake ($3), so I've tried three here. The Peanut Butter shake was a pass for me; far too sweet. The Rich Chocolate? A marked improvement, and one of the few chocolate shakes I've had that didn't taste like it used Hershey's Syrup as the base. But the real winner was the Fresh Banana. For those looking for banana cream pie in semi-liquid form, get thee to Frack Burger. Just remember to ask for a spoon; mine was so thick I could barely coax it up the straw.

A few minor quibbles aside, that was a mighty satisfying meal. Imagine my disappointment then, when on a visit just six days later, everything would go wrong. The burger lacked a proper sear or seasoning, so the wonderful crust I just raved about was MIA. The bun was barely toasted, resulting in a sad, mushy pillow you could chew through with a sideways glance. The fries? Even sadder: limp and burnt tasting. I felt duped.

So what's the real Frack Burger experience? Like so many places, it's a gamble. But if you're lucky enough to be there on a day when they're running on full cylinders, you're in for a real treat. Especially if you're a local craving a burger in the style of In-N-Out but don't feel like driving down to California to reach the nearest location.

About the author: Adam Lindsley is a Seattle-based writer, musician, and the author of the pizza blog, This Is Pizza. As a contributor for both Slice and A Hamburger Today, he is contractually obligated to say he loves pizza and burgers in equal amounts. Which is to say he is a polygamist.

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Portland, OR: An Absence of Balance at Killer Burger

2012-10-19T17:00:00Z

[Photographs: Adam Lindsley]

Killer Burger

4461 NE Sandy Blvd., Portland OR 97213 (map); 971-544-7521; 3 other locations listed at killerburger.biz
Cooking Method: Griddled
Short Order: A heavy hand on the toppings hamstrings any chance for the beef to shine on these well-crusted but unbalanced burgers
Want Fries with That? A thicker frozen variety that's cooked perfectly; better yet, they come with every burger
Prices: 1/4-pound burgers, $7.95; "Girlie"-size burgers, $5.95

I have no good excuse for not getting to Killer Burger sooner. It opened two years ago not a mile from my apartment to mostly positive reviews from the local food hounds, and it has since garnered a fiercely loyal following. So behind schedule am I that the restaurant now has four locations in and around Portland. It was time to see what all the fuss was about.

The simplicity of Killer Burger's menu is one of the best things it has going for it. Burgers and fries are the only items emerging from the kitchen, and beverages are restricted to soda and beer. Now, granted, they do let their creative flag fly when it comes to what goes on those burgers. Purists undoubtedly will scoff at that, but if the result is delicious, I won't turn my nose up on sheer principle.

Let's start with the more conventional burgers on the menu, all of which come topped with bacon and some kind of cheese. The Old School ($7.95; seen at top) comes with a 1/4-pound patty seared on the griddle until a beautiful crust forms on one side. Cheddar, bacon, raw onions, mustard, and mayo accompany the beef between the squishy halves of a toasted, cornmeal-topped Franz bun made specially for Killer Burger.

While I appreciated the relative simplicity of the burger (i.e. no unnecessary vegetation), the construction kept it from greatness. A far too heavy hand was taken with the mayo and mustard, and the burger was served positively drenched in the condiments. It was pretty much all I could taste, even overpowering the bacon, which is no easy feat. A shame, because the patty was plenty juicy despite being cooked medium well. It just wasn't seasoned enough to bring out those beefy undertones.

Oddly, the true flavors of the beef began to surface on the more elaborately topped burgers. Take the Teemah ($7.95), for example. Same bun, same patty, same bacon, but toss on a thick layer of blue cheese sauce, grilled onions, and pickles, and suddenly—don't ask me how—you can actually taste the beef a little. But just a little. A cowl of creamy blue cheese sauce encased the patty with a richness that didn't quite carry the funkier notes of true blue cheese, but it was a nice addition nonetheless.

Also good was the Jose Mendoza ($7.95), which featured roasted green chilies, jack cheese, and the "smoky house sauce." The green chilies imparted their characteristic bitterness to the burger without adding mountains of heat (although Killer Burger does offer a ghost chili version for the über brave/stupid). The chilis were so flavorful, however, that it was difficult to pick up on the cheese, onions, or the house sauce. Like the Teemah, the beef did come through, albeit weakly.

Confounded by the lack of a strong beefy presence and concluding that the perhaps-too-generous proportioning of toppings and condiments was probably to blame, I returned to Killer Burger to try their "Girlie"-sized burgers. These are half the size of their main attraction counterparts, meaning they're about as large as a regular cheeseburger from In-N-Out. I further set up my beef-finding expedition for success by ordering the Kids Killer Basket burger ($4.95), which tops a Girlie-sized patty with the can't-lose combination of American cheese, bacon, grilled onions, and the house sauce. But as with the regular-sized burgers, the beef was still hidden, this time by the smoky house sauce, which is a combination of mustard, mayo, and spices. So much of it had been applied to both halves of the bun that it forced all other flavors—the bacon, the cheese, and especially the beef—far into the background.

At a complete loss for this development, I ordered one more "just for the hell of it" burger: the Girlie-sized version of the Peanut-Butter-Pickle-Bacon ($7.95). I didn't expect the beef to come through on this one, and it didn't. On the other hand, you do get an enormous hit of Killer Burger's housemade peanut butter sauce, which includes small chunks of peanuts in a very sweet sauce that completely takes the burger into PB&J territory. Even with the satisfying crunch of the puckery pickles, the sauce was just too sweet for the burger to be enjoyable.

Thank goodness for the fries, because an ample portion comes with every burger. They're of the frozen variety and about the thickness of your pinky finger, give or take. Crisp, salty, and fluffy on the inside, they're hard to stop eating and an example of better frozen fries.

The fries pair wonderfully with Killer Burger's mildly hoppy Bloodshed Red ale. I highly recommend grabbing a pint (or three).

Killer Burger employs an incredibly friendly staff, and it clearly knows its way around the griddle (I don't know of another place in Portland that gets such a gorgeous crust on the meat). Unfortunately, the final product is sadly unbalanced. These are decent burgers, no question of that, but if nothing else they prove that the beef should be able to stand on its own and that toppings and condiments should complement it, not steal its thunder.

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Portland, OR: The Gimmicky Griddle Burger at The Woodsman Tavern

2012-08-06T14:30:00Z

[Photographs: Adam Lindsley]

The Woodsman Tavern

4537 SE Division St., Portland OR 97206 (map); 971-373-9264; woodsmantavern.com
Cooking Method: Griddled
Short Order: A simple but too-expensive burger with a contrivance that flat-out doesn't work: cheese curds in the patty instead of on top of it
Want Fries with That? They come with the burger, but they're usually undercooked
Prices: Griddle Burger, $12
Notes: Burger only served at brunch

Expectations are the bane of restaurants and the people who frequent them. We all know (and probably have lived) the story: food enthusiast reads a glowing review of an establishment or hears about a killer meal from a close friend with similar tastes, visits said establishment, and is inevitably let down by the results that failed to live up to the hype. It doesn't always happen that way, but often enough a restaurant will prove unsuccessful in meeting these perhaps-unattainable expectations.

That's exactly what happened when I tried the only burger served at The Woodsman Tavern in Portland, Oregon, after it clinched the #7 spot on GQ's "Ten Best New Restaurants in America" list.

The brainchild of Stumptown Coffee owner Duane Sorenson, The Woodsman Tavern offers diners a gorgeous eating space, all dark woods in the booths and mountainous landscapes covering the forest green walls. Former Olympic Provisions (another recipient of a "Best New Restaurants in America" list, this time from Forbes) chef Jason Barwikowski helms the kitchen here, which is getting a lot of praise around town for its seafood and shellfish.

Eyeballing the description of the Griddle Burger on the menu, the corners of my mouth crept steadily up into a dopey grin: Tillamook cheese curds, pickles, and mustard, that's it. No excess greenage or potentially clashing ingredients, just the basics. Granted, cheese curds aren't found on the average burger, but this is still cheese we're talking about here. I balked at the $12 price tag but figured if they could knock it out of the park with so few components, it'd be worth parting with a dozen greenbacks.

Long story short, this was no home run. The burger I was served was completely fine but nowhere near close to one worthy of breaking the $10 barrier.

For starters, you may have noticed from the photo heading this review that there are no cheese curds on the burger. That's because they're blended into the patty itself. Okay, I thought, maybe this will be like those cheese-filled hot dogs I loved when I was a kid. A gooey, cheesy surprise awaits me inside! Nope. Aside from a single delicious patch of griddle-crusted cheese on one side of the patty (see photo above), there was no visual confirmation of the presence of the curds anywhere on or in the burger. Not only could I not see the cheese, I couldn't taste it, either.

The patty, one of the most marvelously tender ones I've eaten lately, lacks a strong beefy presence. No one I asked at the restaurant knew what cuts of beef are used, and none of my e-mails were returned, so for now it seems they're keeping that information under wraps. I do know that while the patty is seasoned with salt and pepper, its flavors are curiously muted. Perhaps the inclusion of the cheese curds is responsible for dialing down the overall beefiness. Conversely, it's possible that the cheese curds are responsible for the patty's incredible tenderness. Regardless of the texture, the meat should be more flavorful than this.

What does come through loud and clear, however, are the mustard and pickles. In fact, the acids in this pair completely dominate the burger. The Woodsman Tavern's Griddle Burger perfectly illustrates why it is just as easy to go overboard with mustard as it is with ketchup. There's not even a tremendous amount of mustard here, but it's enough to cloak the beef almost totally in a veil of that familiar "yellow" bite of French's or Gulden's. If the beef had come across more assertively, this wouldn't have been as much of a problem. As for the pickles, they weren't anything special, bringing a strong vinegar profile to the burger and little else.

Best part of this burger? The bun, actually. It's studded with sesame seeds and has a very nice chew to it, along with a mild buttery presence. This could hardly be called a juicy burger, so the bun had no trouble holding up to its relatively small payload.

Fries were a big letdown. A little longer in the fryer might have saved them, but as served to me they arrived anemic and limp. At least they were decently salted. They came with a ramekin of mayo and sriracha, and mixed together it made for a palatable but overly spicy fry sauce that won't be giving ketchup a run for its money anytime soon.

For all I know, The Woodsman Tavern may very well be one of the ten best new restaurants in America as GQ says it is. It's just painfully clear that the burger had little to do with achieving that accolade. (Full disclosure: I've only tried the weekend brunch, which is the only time the restaurant's burger makes its appearance on the menu.) I think the obvious solution here is to get the curds out of the patty and put them where they belong: on top of the meat. Then cut the price by four bucks. As it stands, there's an outpost of Little Big Burger not seven blocks away serving a $3.75 cheeseburger that blows this one out of the water.

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Tualatin, OR: Dickie Jo's Burgers Is on the Right Track but Not There Yet

2012-06-22T15:45:00Z

[Photographs: Adam Lindsley]

Dickie Jo's Burgers

19221 SW Martinazzi Ave., Tualatin OR 97062 (map); 503-783-6135; djburgers.com
Cooking Method: Griddled
Short Order: A good fast food-style burger that needs a bit of tweaking before it reaches greatness
Want Fries with That? Inconsistent, but get the ones tossed in olive oil and parmesan
Prices: 1/3-pound Regular, $4.99; 2/3-pound Double, $6.99

From the moment you step through the front doors of Dickie Jo's Burgers, you have a pretty clear idea of what you're in for. Telltale red-and-white booths, a large griddle on the back wall, the sounds and smells of sizzling beef in the air, it all says one thing: This is a burger joint, by God! And with a few adjustments here and there, Dickie's Jo's could be a burger joint worthy of a lot more attention than it's getting now.

The second of two locations (the first is farther south in Eugene, Oregon), the Tualatin branch of Dickie Jo's comes custom-rigged with gobs of '50s nostalgia, right down to the chrome-rimmed tabletops and the carefully selected font on the neon sign out front. Like Five Guys, probably their closest competitor, Dickie Jo's specializes in fatter patties than most fast food purveyors, but expands the menu to include chicken strips, chili, a few sandwiches, a wedge salad, hot dogs, and desserts. Surprisingly large options aside, make no mistake: the burgers are the cornerstone of this operation.

Feeling brave (or just particularly ravenous), I started with the Double, a full two-thirds of a pound of beef resting on a house-baked bun and topped with iceberg lettuce, tomato, red onions, and "DJ" sauce, which consists primarily of mayo and ketchup. I opted to add American cheese for 49¢, although cheddar, Swiss, pepper jack, and blue are all available.

The first thing I noticed was the beautiful brown crust on the patties from the griddle:

I'll say this about the beef, it was not bland. Unfortunately, it was oversalted (and in case you didn't get enough, there are huge canisters of La Baleine sea salt on every table). Also, the patties aren't seasoned with pepper, though they really should be to add that extra layer of flavor and even out the salt a little.

The coarse grind of the beef (an 80/20 meat-to-fat ratio) seems to work against it, because the patties contained more than a few tough pockets of fat that made certain bites difficult to chew. Dickie Jo's doesn't grind the beef themselves, but they really ought to give it a try to help spread the gristle around more efficiently.

At the counter, you can request your burger cooked "Pink" or "No Pink," and I of course went with the former. "As pink as possible," were my exact words, but the burger arrived pretty close to well done regardless of my decision. It's by no means a dealbreaker for a fast food-style burger, but I wish they had at least given me a little pink as advertised. That said, it was still leaps and bounds better than the hockey puck frozen patties normally used in these burgers, and plenty juicy.

Dickie Jo's bakes their buns in-house, slathers them with butter, and then toasts them. It's a serviceable bun that held up well even under the heavy load of beef on the Double, but it's a little too dense for these burgers; something airier would work much better. The buttery crunch was pretty satisfying on its own, though.

All in all, the Double was just too much meat for me to handle (boy, if I had a nickel for every time I've uttered those words). I think most people will have a hard time finishing it, which is why the Regular, at just one-third of a pound, is a better option. The harmony between meat and toppings is much more balanced here than with the Double. I went with blue cheese instead of American on this one, and the pungent crumbles weren't lost in the strong flavors of the bun and beef.

Four options of Northwest Russet fries are available, and all are skin-on and fried in rice bran oil. The fries themselves emerge from the fryer texturally inconsistent; some were nicely crisp while others were flaccid. They're pretty salty, but that's no surprise given the rest of the food. Both the Truffle-Parmesan and the X-Virgin Garlic Oil fries were significant improvements to the standard variety, but the latter was the standout. Tossed with garlic-infused extra virgin olive oil and then dusted with parmesan and Italian parsley, they pack a lot of flavor into relatively small areas.

Shakes were some of the creamiest I've had anywhere. The chocolate malt was sufficiently malty, and with the exception of the sometimes-inefficiently mixed chocolate syrup, I found little at fault with it. Real ice cream would be a nice upgrade, but it would also jack up the prices, so I'm fine with a soft serve progeny at this price point ($2.99 for a small, $3.99 for a large).

Does Dickie Jo's need work? Yes, it does, if it wants to ever bear comparison to Shake Shack or any of the other establishments elevating the fast food-style burger. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to going back in the near future. By altering their methods just slightly in key problem areas, Dickie Jo's could have a serious contender on their hands that doesn't need nostalgia to sell it.

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Portland, OR: The Towering Triumph of Slow Bar's Slowburger

2012-03-23T14:30:00Z

[Photographs: Adam Lindsley, unless otherwise noted]

Slow Bar

533 SE Grand Ave., Portland OR 97214 (map); 503-230-7767; slowbar.net
Cooking Method: Griddled
Short Order: A formidably tall burger stacked with two crunchy onion rings is delicious, incredibly messy, and a heck of a bargain
Want Fries with That? Hand-cut fries come with the burger, and they're a pretty good rendition of the style
Prices: 8-ounce Slowburger w/fries, $9.75

Esquire recently polled readers of its Eat Like a Man food blog on the "most life-changing burger joint" in the country, and among the 18 nominees, only three had not yet received a review on Serious Eats. One of those was Slow Bar right here in Portland, an oversight of considerable magnitude on my part. So without further ado, here is my take on what is surely the tallest burger I've ever attempted to eat.

On a dingy corner of a busy stretch of Grand Avenue in Southeast Portland sits the drab and easily missed Slow Bar, a dive possessing little in the way of exterior charm with which to draw in the kind of clientele seeking the caliber of upscale burger typically served in fancier digs. Breach the threshold and glance at the menu, however, and clearly there's more at play here than the aging vinyl booths and scuzzy locale portend.

For its signature Slowburger, Slow Bar starts with a painstakingly measured half-pound of 20 percent fat Painted Hills ground chuck and cooks it to order* on the flat top. Apparently they used to blend in herbs and spices into the meat, but thankfully someone put a stop to that misguided practice in recent years. The beef is quite tender, arriving with a lovely crust on the top and bottom and a semi-loose grind that keeps most of the juice inside the meat and off your plate (or hands). The thick slice of nutty Gruyère melting on top of the patty is a good match for the simple beef, though in all honesty another slice or two would make for a more complex (and, sadly, more expensive) burger.

* As best they can. More on this later.

[Photograph by Nick Zukin/PortlandFood.org]

Not that it isn't complex as is; the meat and cheese are just the beginning of this monument to excess. The burger's most noticeable trait and selling point is the pair of beer-battered onion rings stacked on top of each other, forming a solid inch-and-a-half of deep-fried crunch. The rings trigger the same pleasure sensors as potato chips stuffed into a sandwich while managing not to overpower the beef with either onion or grease. Slow Bar probably wasn't the first place to try this, but few have accomplished it as expertly.

A crisp leaf of butter lettuce and a healthy smear of garlic-heavy aioli round out the above-the-meat toppings, while a layer of tangy pickle relish augmented with ketchup and horseradish provides the much-needed "pucker factor" and locks the beef in place to the bottom of the Grand Central Bakery brioche bun. That bun, known for its delicate airiness, works successfully on numerous bistro burgers around town, but here it is far from the ideal choice. The mighty Slowburger is simply too heavy for bread this dainty, and the pickle relish alone eats through the bottom bun halfway before you finish. Swapping it out for something more substantial and dense would be a smart move on Slow Bar's part. As it stands, expect to get a lot of that relish all over your hands.

Earlier in the review I mentioned that Slow Bar cooks burgers to order, as they should. Well, as is the case with at least 90 percent of chefs cooking burgers (and that number is probably too generous), the folks manning at the flat top in Slow Bar's kitchen are not skilled enough to deliver your burger exactly as requested all the time. I ordered this particular burger medium rare, yet it arrived in the narrow rift between medium and medium well. I've seen others come out well done. It's doubtful most patrons will care, but those of us who do, let's hope they start paying a little more attention in the future (and start using a thermometer).

Hand-cut fries are always a dicey proposition. Most of the time they just end up dense and flabby. I can't promise they'll always come out this way, but the skin-on fries that accompanied my most recent Slowburger were crisp and well-salted, lacking the burnt taste that signifies improper frying. They come with the burger, so you don't even have to fork over any extra greenbacks for these beauties.

At $9.75, Slow Bar's Slowburger is a major value. I can think of very few places in the city serving a burger and fries of this quality at this price point, and despite the unconventional topping choice of onion rings, the burger really works as a cohesive whole. It's a shame Slow Bar's chefs can't be more consistent, but it's a risk worth taking. Intrigued? Then you'd better start your mouth-stretching exercises right now.

About the author: Adam Lindsley is a Pacific Northwest-based writer, musician, and the author of the pizza blog, This Is Pizza. You can follow him at @ThisIsPizza on Twitter. As a contributor for both Slice and A Hamburger Today, he is contractually obligated to say he loves pizza and burgers in equal amounts. Which is to say he is a polygamist.

Gresham, OR: Longburgers at Dea's In & Out

2012-01-25T18:45:00Z

[Photographs: Adam Lindsley]

Dea's In & Out

755 Northeast Burnside Road, Gresham, OR 97030 (map); 503-665-3439; facebook.com/DeasInandOut
Cooking Method: Griddled
Short Order: Slightly above-average fast-food burgers with a gimmick: The patties are stretched out instead of round
Want Fries with That? They're not horrendous, but they're clearly middling. Better to go for the reliable tator tots.
Prices: approx. 1/4-pound Longburger, $3; Double Longburger w/cheese: $4.50

There are few ways to get me to review a burger joint in my fair city faster than when someone makes a "best-of" list and includes a place I haven't tried. That was the case when The Oregonian released its list of the top 10 classic burgers in the Portland area, prompting the realization that I had never eaten at (or even heard of) Dea's In & Out in neighboring Gresham.

News to me, Dea's In & Out has been around for over 50 years. Not quite as old as that other In-N-Out, but by Portland measurements, that's ancient. Judging by the clientele I saw over my half-hour visit, Dea's boasts a steady stream of loyal fans from multiple generations.

Dea's gimmick, and the star of this rodeo, is its Longburger. With a patty stretched to an imprecise rectangle six inches long, it's no larger than a normal-sized burger and somehow feels a little smaller, just shy of a quarter pound (although this could very well be an illusion of the abnormal shape). I loved how the griddle got the patty crispy around the edges, although for some reason the rest of the burger didn't develop much of a crust. The two patties on my Double Longburger were decently seasoned and had a nice loose texture that shows the meat wasn't overhandled or too compressed.

There really isn't much else to the Longburger: a squishy and delicate (very delicate—see my thumb imprint in the shot above?) housemade bun toasted on one side, pickles, minced onions, and a judicious application of the tangy house sauce consisting of mayonnaise, relish, and a little ketchup. What I didn't discover until later was that if you want tomatoes and lettuce on your longburger, you must request them at the counter, but the burger didn't need them. The house sauce does a fine job cutting the richness of the beef and cheese by itself. Altogether, it's a wholly decent "drive-in style" cheeseburger, with a flavor vaguely reminiscent of the burgers from the Burgermaster chain in Seattle.

While Dea's In & Out's longburger might score some points for novelty, their sides are a snoozefest. The best of the lot are the tater tots, which are exactly like every tater tot you've ever eaten: a salty, golden, crispy exterior hiding steaming-hot innards. I think you get a little screwed on the serving size, though. For $2.25, I would expect more than just over a baker's dozen, but maybe I'm being unrealistic?

The fries are nothing to write home about, although they do deliver a nice hit of salt. Unlike the burger, these weren't greasy at all, and they stayed crisp even after they cooled. The pale white color doesn't exactly get your mouth watering, though. For a quarter you can get a side of their fry sauce, which tastes much like the house sauce on the burger, but with even more mayonnaise. While I thought it was a key component of the burger, I didn't think it improved the fries at all. Canada-like levels of mayo here.

The most boring of the three sides I ordered, the onion rings, have a lot going for them, but with a fatal lack of salt they're not worth the effort. While the fries aren't cut in-house, the onion rings are made entirely on the premises. Texturally, they're exactly what I look for in a good onion ring: a good crunch that isn't too thick. Unfortunately, they don't get salted directly after their escape from the hot oil like they should, so shake some on liberally as soon as you get them back to your table before they cool.

It has to be said that the chocolate malt I ordered was an unmitigated disaster. Soupy, bubbly, and disturbingly dark, with a grossly disproportionate chocolate syrup-to-ice cream ratio, there was nothing appetizing about it whatsoever. Also: no trace of the malt. Dea's shakes get a lot of praise from the locals, so it's quite possible this was an off day for whoever made mine (a really off day).

Dea's In & Out can't compare in any respect to the California-based In-N-Out, but it really isn't trying to, and never has. This is food cooked the same way it was half a century ago, and unlike many longtime Portland institutions, this one holds up somewhat. It can't be called great, but for a cheap, greasy, fast-food burger that blows McDonald's and Burger King out of the water, you could do a lot worse.

Portland, OR: Marginal Thumbs-Up for Lardo's Double Burger, Big Thumbs-Up for the Fries

2011-12-16T16:15:00Z

[Photographs: Adam Lindsley]

Lardo

4262 SE Belmont St., Portland OR 97215 (map); 802-734-8706; lardopdx.com
Cooking Method: Griddled
Short Order: The big fat Double Burger does the Lardo name proud, but too many minor shortcomings keep it from reaching true greatness
Want Fries with That? You'd be a fool, a damn fool, to pass up these spuds fried in pork fat and dusted with salt, parmesan, and herbs
Prices: Double Burger with Tillamook cheddar, $8; Lardo fries, $4

Portland has wallowed in food cart overload for most of 2011 (even longer, some might argue). While it might not be fair to say it has jumped the shark—or even nuked the fridge—the Portland food cart scene has ballooned to such epic proportions that it cannot sustain itself at its current levels, a sad reality you can see for yourself in the sheer number of carts closing each month. Part of the crisis lies in the mediocrity of the food being served at a high percentage of the carts, a problem that isn't echoed by the estimable Lardo.

Founded by Rick Gencarelli, formerly of the award-winning Inn at Shelburne Farms restaurant in Vermont, Aqua in San Francisco, and Olives in New York, Lardo puts out some of the best (and, it should be noted, saltiest) sandwiches in the city. Having sampled a number of these over the past few months, I had to know if his Double Burger, at a mere eight bucks, could qualify as one of Portland's best burger deals. The answer depends on how high your standards have been set.

For me, I can't call it a great burger, although it is certainly a good one. No one component is keeping it from greatness; rather, it's a confederacy of minor blemishes that conspire against it. Gencarelli begins with two 3.5-ounce patties (ground to a whopping 60/40 fat-to-beef ratio, the highest I've seen since In-N-Out) from Cascade Natural Beef, but after a stint on the griddle all the pink is cooked out of them and no sear or crust develops on the outside of the meat. It's a strange predicament. You'd think a burger cooked medium-well would sit on the griddle long enough to form a sear, but this just isn't so here. My only conjecture is that the cooking surface isn't set hot enough for that.

Depending on who you talk to, the inclusion of the one-to-two-ounce slab of pork belly on top of the seven ounces of ground beef may be seen as excessive, magnificent, or mildly distracting. I think it's a little of all three. The pork belly itself is delicious, but it's somewhat smaller than the beef patties nestled beneath it, leaving some bites sans pig. It also leads your palate a considerable distance down the path from the flavor of the beef, an unfortunate side effect which could be remedied by using a thinner slice of belly (one reason why bacon works so well). Still, others may be grateful for the inclusion of more flesh on this burger, so take my hesitations with a grain of salt.

Speaking of salt, there is no shortage of it in this burger. In fact, in stark contrast to Dick's Kitchen, Lardo is fearless (reckless?) in its use of the little white crystals. I tend to like my food on the salty side, so I was fine with the sodium level in this burger, but I could see some being put off by it. Fair warning: Everything I've eaten at Lardo has been high-sodium, so make sure you bring along a good liter or so of water to replace whatever fluids the food leaches out of you.

A pity mild cheddar makes yet another appearance here in lieu of a sharper, more strongly flavored cheese. The toothless yellow squares offer little more than a glimpse of gold between the meat coasters, whereas a longer-aged cheddar would do a better job of complementing the meat. Thankfully, the copious smear of "Lardo sauce" on the bottom bun makes up for any flavor lost by the lackluster cheese. Equal parts mayo, Dijon mustard, and relish, it has a nice sour profile that isn't so puckery that it steals the spotlight from the beef, but cuts the richness of the fatty meats.

Rounding out the Double Burger are the requisite greens (sliced green lettuce, in this case) and the Kaiser roll from Portland's Fleur De Lis Bakery. The roll's pretty big, and while a decent amount of bread is needed to hold up to this much cow and pig, this particular roll is a smidge too large; you'll end up finishing the meat with plenty of bun left over. Again, not a gamebreaker, but another candidate for improvement.

My nit-picking end there, because I have nothing but applause for the Lardo fries. Pre-cut, frozen, then deep-fried in pork fat, they're hit with a very generous toss of salt, parmesan, and herbs (predominantly rosemary and sage). Gencarelli cooks them perfectly; no limp noodles here. You can even order them "dirty" for an additional two dollars, which gets you pork scraps and Mama Lil's pickled peppers. The fries are outstanding, among the best in the city, and perfect alone or dipped in the housemade ketchup. But oh are they salty.

Unfortunately, as is far too often the case at food carts, quality control is an issue that can't be ignored. Lardo is one of the more popular Portland food carts, so working alone, Gencarelli can get overwhelmed very quickly. On one occasion the parmesan and herbs were omitted from my fries; on a separate to-go order, the ketchup was forgotten. Just make sure to double-check your order before leaving the premises and I'm sure Gencarelli will be more than happy to set things right.

Despite the bevy of criticisms I laid on Lardo's Double Burger, it's important to note that it is still a good burger and worth its $8 price tag, even though it can't in my opinion be called great. Most places in the city are charging over $10 for a burger of this size, so you really are getting some bang for your buck. But if you accompany it with Lardo's fries (and why on earth wouldn't you?), just know going in that the spuds are probably going to be the highlight of the meal.

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Portland, OR: Get Some Burger with Your Cheese at Veritable Quandary

2011-12-02T20:00:00Z

[Photographs: Adam Lindsley]

Veritable Quandary

1220 SW 1st Ave., Portland OR 97204 (map); 503-227-7342; veritablequandary.com
Cooking Method: Grilled
Short Order: A no-frills "cheffy" burger isn't the most complex burger in town, but beyond the oversized bun, its flaws are minor
Want Fries with That? A large pile of house-cut salted and peppered fries come with the burger, and they're pretty darn good
Prices: VQ Burger with white cheddar & fries, $12

Veritable Quandary is best known for two things: mega-popular weekend brunches, and crowded weekday power lunches for downtown Portland's movers and shakers. The menu leans heavily toward the upscale: pumpkin mascarpone agnolotti, rabbit pate with roasted brioche, duck confit spring rolls. Probably not the first place you'd think to find a really good burger, but with the kitchen helmed by current chef Annie Cuggino, that's exactly what you'll find here.

Looking at that pic up top, I'm amazed I responded so positively to this burger. I mean, it breaks one of the 10 Hamburger Commandments: Thou shalt not place thy beef 'tween the halves of a leavened bread most rustic.—López-Alt 3:16. And I won't deny it, the size of the ciabatta roll here (from Ken's Artisan Bakery) far exceeds the diameter of the patty.

So why aren't I standing on my chair crying foul? Because even though this is ciabatta, it's the softest ciabatta you're likely to find anywhere. A far cry from tough and chewy, its airy texture is actually perfect for a burger of this thickness and offers little bite resistance or meat backsliding. Yes, it's still much too big around for this burger, but given the exquisite flavor of the beef, it was a sin worth forgiving, or at least punishable by no more than a ruler-slap to the wrist.

The burger I was served featured a salty crust on the top and bottom of the patty (less so on the sides) and nice char marks from the grill. Cooked medium as requested, the beef had a somewhat fine grind, but not so small that it turned to mush like a Kobe burger is wont to do. Lacking any fancy seasonings, this burger proves once again that ground beef needs nothing more than salt and pepper to make it sing like Pavarotti.

Good thing the beef is so flavorful, because there's surprisingly little else to this burger. Most noticeably, Veritable Quandary piles on a monster slab of white cheddar half as thick as the beef itself. A smart choice, given how innocuous cheddar can be on a burger. Sheer volume of cheese is never a bad thing in my book, even though the cheddar hadn't quite melted all the way in the center of burger.

Rounding out the burger, a trio of mild: mild green leaf lettuce, mild basil aioli, and mild pickled vegetables, which consisted of onions, squash, red and yellow bell peppers, and green beans (ever had a green bean on a burger? This was my first). The veggies had a very low vinegar element to them, so I suspect they hadn't been pickled very long before they found their way to my plate. While they certainly took a back seat to the beef, they added some nice crunch to the meal once stacked on the burger.

For $12, you'd hope your burger would come with fries, and Veritable Quandary's are quite good. Because they're house-cut, some of the fries suffer from occasional limpness, but they're not overly greasy or burnt-tasting. Dissect one and you'll find a shaft of cumulous potato hiding within the salted-and-peppered exterior. I usually don't finish a serving of fries, but I devoured every last one of these, which should say something about their addictive quality.

I tend to avoid trendy spots like Veritable Quandary because they're often too crowded and the food usually seems like an afterthought. But that clearly isn't the case here. While you may have to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with yuppies galore during the wait for a table at peak hours, the just-shy-of-great burger that awaits you as a reward for your patience is suitable compensation.

About the author: Adam Lindsley is a Pacific Northwest-based writer, musician, and the author of the pizza blog, This Is Pizza. As a contributor for both Slice and A Hamburger Today, he is contractually obligated to say he loves pizza and burgers in equal amounts. Which is to say he is a polygamist.

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Portland, OR: Nostalgia Can't Save the All-Too-Familiar Burgers at Stanich's

2011-10-28T17:00:00Z

[Photographs: Adam Lindsley]

Stanich's

4915 NE Fremont St., Portland OR 97213 (map); 503-281-2322; stanichs.com
Cooking Method: Griddled
Short Order: While this burger may have been worthy of its considerable praise in the past, its striking mediocrity in 2011 is unmistakable
Want Fries with That? How hungry are you? The hand-cut fries are okay, but they're too soft and need a lot of salt to season them up.
Prices: 4-ounce "The Special," $6.50; regular 4-ounce cheeseburger, $5.75

Stanich's is one of those Portland institutions that must have had one helluva heyday to garner the kind of praise that's been showered on it over the years. AOL Cityguide placed it on its "15 Burgers to Try Before You Die" list, and it even earned a spot in the venerated George Motz's Hamburger America: A State-by-State Guide to 100 Great Burger Joints. The Portland Monthly chose it as the city's "Best Old School Burger." The local Willamette Week has picked it as the best burger in Portland, and Stanich's won the Best of Citysearch Best Hamburger award multiple times. With all those accolades, this has to be a pretty awesome burger, right?

Want to find out? Get in your car, hop on the freeway, and the first non-national-chain "Hamburgers" sign you see, get off at that exit, find the burger joint, and have one of their burgers. Finished? Congrats, my friend. You've just eaten a burger from Stanich's.

The purpose of that little analogy was to point out the fact that Stanich's makes burgers like the vast majority of roadside burger shacks make burgers. Flat, perfectly round, underseasoned quarter-pound patties on a huge bun with a lot of veggies piled on it. I've eaten this burger a hundred times or more across America, and the burgers I tried from Stanich's are only the latest in that long, long list.

Which isn't to say Stanich's burgers are awful; they're not. They're just very mediocre. And while they may have once been among the city's elite burgers, the explosion of quality burgers in Portland—including its first great fast food-style burger at Little Big Burger—has left it in the dust.

Not that the regulars will care much. It's a dark, quiet little tavern plastered floor-to-ceiling with a kajillion sports pennants, with lots of cozy booths and nary a window to the outside world in sight; it's been that way since 1949. And the staff...well, prior to my inaugural visit, I'd heard the employees were a rather prickly bunch with a fair amount of disdain for newcomers, but my experience couldn't have been further from that. The woman who took my order and rang up my check was as friendly and accommodating as anyone I've met in the service industry.

On to the burgers. The Special, noted on the menu as "The World's Greatest Hamburger," begins with that uninspired disc of beef (menu says "fresh ground," for what it's worth) and a slice of melted American cheese and rests it atop a pile of shredded iceberg lettuce, onions, tomatoes, sweet pickle relish, mayo, mustard, bacon, a slice of ham, and a fried egg. Sounds like a lot, and it is. Keeping this burger from collapsing into a big greasy pile is a challenge in and of itself, and the overabundance of toppings forces a situation in which only the strongest flavors will cut through the mix, which means this is essentially a ham-and-onion sandwich.

The beef is almost completely overshadowed by the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to this burger. The egg, with its bright, inviting, sunshine-yellow yolk, is a total loss. I enjoyed the flavor of the ham, though its pedigree seems no higher than the lunchmeat variety (not that I'm complaining for a burger this size under $7, I'm just pointing out the facts). I could not taste the bacon to save my life. And one more gripe: the bun is just too damn big. A good half-inch cleared the circumference of the patty, meaning that I bit through nothing but bread and veggies for the first two bites until I actually reached the beef. Can you picture my sad face?

The regular cheeseburger was a bit more balanced. Sure, the same humongous bun makes a reappearance here, but the beef isn't quite so inundated with veggies this time around. It still tastes like it could use more salt and pepper pre-griddle, though. My waitress informed me that they cook the burgers medium, and if you squint really hard I suppose you can see a little pink in the center, but a juicy burger this ain't.

If the burger doesn't fill you up, then you could do worse than order a small basket of Stanich's hand-cut fries. They aren't crisp, and they require copious use of the salt shaker, but you can add them to your burger basket for $1.25 (or get a whole basket for only $2). Like the burgers, they're squarely in the not-terrible-but-not-good camp.

Seems cruel to pick on Stanich's, a much-beloved and once (even recently)-lauded dive purveying burgers long before I or even my parents were born. But I've eaten at other decades-old establishments (most in Los Angeles), and some put out absolutely phenomenal burgers that, if the longtime fans are to be believed, have always been like that. If Stanich's burgers were always like this, then they were never special to begin with.

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Portland, OR: 'Paleolithic' Burgers at Dick's Kitchen Should Have Stayed in the Stone Age

2011-09-30T17:30:00Z

[Photographs: Adam Lindsley]

Dick's Kitchen

3312 SE Belmont St., Portland OR 97214 (map); 503-235-0146; dkportland.com
Cooking Method: Griddled
Short Order: Dubbed "the world's first Stone Age diner," Dick's Kitchen promotes the Paleolithic Diet, to its detriment. Crushingly disappointing burgers are missing one crucial element: salt
Want Fries with That? These tough-as-nails air-baked "not fries" are "not good"
Prices: 5-ounce Bacon Burger with pimento cheese, $10.75; Wild Boar Burger w/cheddar and "not fries," $10.45

Salt. Without it, your precious all-natural grass-fed ground beef is nothing. Nowhere is this more painfully obvious than Dick's Kitchen, a bizarre pastiche of old-school '50s diners, greasy spoons, and upscale sit-down restaurants that works on none of these levels.

Owner Richard Satnick based the Dick's Kitchen menu off the Paleolithic Diet popularized by gastroenterologist Walter L. Voegtlin in the 1970s. It was designed to mirror the actual diet of ancient man: primarily carnivorous, with little to no grains, dairy, refined sugar, or salt.

There it is again—salt—the key to a great burger (the key to great meat, really), and the restaurant's very foundation is dead set against it. Dick's Kitchen never had a chance.

That much was clear from the first bite of the Bacon Burger, to which I added the housemade pimento cheese. The patty of grass-fed Carman Ranch beef got a toasty sear and came out tasting oddly carbonized despite the lack of over-charring. Cooked a bit past the requested medium, it was dry and flavorless, nothing more than a physical presence under a chapeau of cheese, bacon, veggies, and bun.

Despite the tower of toppings, only the bacon came through. The pimento cheese, so delicious and sharp when it's done well, also fell victim to this egregious aversion to sodium.

The Dick's Kitchen Manifesto of Evil

As if to make up for the fact that the food is minimally salted in the kitchen, a grinder of sea salt rests on every table near a conspicuous placard suggesting that, should you find the food's salt content a little lacking, you may feel free to add more at your discretion. Fine in theory, but...no, not fine in theory. Adding salt to the patty after it's already been cooked doesn't draw out the flavors in the beef nearly as well and leaves a crunchy, grainy texture on the outside of your burger. In the words of Alton Brown, that's not good eats.

Let's move on. Every week, Dick's Kitchen makes a specialty burger with an unconventional meat. This week it was wild boar, so I gave it a shot, opting to top it with Wisconsin farmhouse cheddar. What a waste of a buck. As I've said time and time again, if you're not using extra sharp cheddar (and a lot of it), then there's no reason to use cheddar at all. Mild cheddar is flavorless on a burger, and it was most certainly flavorless on this one.

As to the boar itself, I would love to know how the restaurant managed to make a patty as crammed with pockets of gristle as this one so very, very dry. The boar was expectedly gamey, with a pronounced funkiness that instantly put me off. I ate about a third of the burger and could tread that path no further.

Well, how about the fries? First of all, they're not fries at all, but "not-fries," as they quite literally are not fried. Instead, they're air-baked, which is code for "transmogrified into balsa wood." Hot from the oven, they're lightly (very lightly) dusted with a seasoned salt that does virtually nothing to bring out any flavor in the potato. Tough as leather, they're saved only by the housemade chipotle ketchup, the first thing here that actually tastes like something. The mayo-heavy "secret special sauce," on the other hand, had an interesting chunky texture going for it, but no flavor to speak of. But that ketchup ... it has a mean kick to it, so don't go horking it down unless you have your water glass handy, or in my case ...

... a chocolate malt. And while Dick's Kitchen has long way to go toward getting the consistency of the shake right, they have the maltiness down in spades. Seriously, this was the single maltiest milkshake I have ever consumed. It was like liquid Whoppers. The shake itself is quite thin, but the malt is so powerful and delicious that it's a forgivable sin. Dick's Kitchen's one forgivable sin.

I don't mean to bring on the hate, but everything about this meal (except the shake) frustrated me. Do people actually want to eat like this? At these prices? The owner seems to think so: he's opening a second location on NW 21st. I don't wish Satnick any ill will, I just wish he'd put salt in his food. Oh the difference those little white crystals would make.

(By the way, this is a great time to go learn a bit more about that very subject.)

Portland, OR: Metrovino's Big, Messy, Undeniably Great Double Cheeseburger

2011-09-16T19:45:00Z

[Photographs: Adam Lindsley; wine glasses above: Jessica Lee]

Metrovino

1139 NW 11th Ave., Portland OR 97209 (map); 503-517-7778; metrovinopdx.com
Cooking Method: Grilled
Short Order: A colossally messy burger belies the upscale restaurant's swanky digs. But it's good. Really good.
Want Fries with That? Yes, I do. Too bad Metrovino doesn't make them. Instead you get a salad. Ay yi yi.
Prices: 12-ounce double cheeseburger, $14

The double cheeseburger at Metrovino first entered my radar when Nick Zukin, co-owner of Kenny & Zuke's Delicatessen, rated it the best burger in Portland. Better than the one at Grüner?, I wondered. To quote the immortal Vizzini, "Inconceivable!"

Still, saying something is the best of anything is the surest way to pique my interest. And what better time to satisfy that curiosity than the present, now that I'm back in good ol' Portland?

I knew going in that this was a big burger. How big? Two six-ounce patties big, that's how. So in preparation of this 12-ounce behemoth, I abstained from consuming anything other than water for the 12 hours leading up to my 8 p.m. date with destiny. Good thing, too, or else I never would have been able to finish this bad boy.

According to Metrovino's proprietor, Todd Steele, the restaurant grinds the 12 ounces of Painted Hills chuck in-house to a 20 percent fat ratio. After a brushing of olive oil and generous proportions of salt and pepper, the patties hit the hot griddle and sear just until a crust forms, leaving the inside very much in the medium-to-medium-rare range. The tender beef arrives at the table on the verge of falling apart and bursting at the seams with juices, making the execution of a successful cross-sectioning a dicey endeavor indeed.

Thankfully the restaurant anticipates the deluge of liquid flavor and provides you with hot, dampened hand towels. Now that's flying first class.

A single layer of creamy fontina cheese melts between the patties, and surprisingly its nuttiness isn't lost in the massive slabs of beef (although a second layer on top of the patties would really take this to the next level). The patties rest upon a patch of crisp shredded iceberg lettuce and are covered in crunchy diced onions. A "fancy sauce" consisting of housemade mayo blended with Dijon mustard, housemade ketchup and pickles, and Sriracha gets slathered on the underside of the top bun, only to ooze down over the sides of the burger, spreading bold, tangy deliciousness into every little cranny and crevice on the way down to the bottom bun.

If I had to lay one criticism on this burger, it's that housemade bun. Not the flavor, which is actually excellent, but because it has the texture of a sponge. It's almost rubbery in that regard. But on second thought, the bun probably needs that sponginess to keep from disintegrating from all the juices pouring out of the burger. Even nearing the end of the burger, when most buns have long since dissolved into a pasty breadlike sludge, this bun was nearly as solid as it was when it first arrived at the table. So it definitely has that going for it.

Working your way through this mighty work of meat art, you're hit with a cycle of flavors, with each component of the burger coming to the forefront from one bite to the next. You still taste every aspect of the burger with each bite, but sometimes the onions dominate the palate, sometimes it's the sweet-yet-almost-imperceptibly-spicy fancy sauce, and sometimes it's the intense beefiness of the twin patties. It's a roller coaster ride of the sweet, salty, and savory, and I found myself anticipating with some eagerness which ingredient would take charge with each subsequent bite. If only more burgers were as fun to eat as this one!

[Photograph: Nick Zukin/PortlandFood.org]

What a shame that this great sandwich doesn't come with fries. I have no doubt Metrovino could concoct some seriously great high-end fries, but the menu is utterly devoid of them. Instead you're served a tasty wedge of housemade pickle and a simply dressed salad on the side. Which is fine and all, but the salad doesn't really go with the burger. True, it's probably a good idea if for no other reason than to somewhat counteract the nigh-excessive brick of flesh and grease and fat you're ingesting, but good old-fashioned fries, even cheap frozen ones, are sorely missed here.

The burger sets you back $14, and that ain't chump change. It is, however, worth the cash, even sans fries. A single-patty version is available on the happy hour menu for $9, but I think one patty would be a mistake here. The bun is so substantial and the flavor of the fancy sauce and onions so strong that I think one patty would throw off that equilibrium. Stick with the two-patty version, even if you can't finish it in one sitting. If nothing else, the other diners around you will be impressed that you tried.

So, better than the Grüner burger? In the end, it all comes down to personal taste. Zukin isn't wrong to say it's his favorite burger in Portland, but I think the burger at Grüner is just a bit better (and the bun several times better). Regardless, it's still one of the major destination burgers in Portland, and one any burger lover in the area would be foolish to miss.

About the author: Adam Lindsley is a Seattle-based novelist and the author of the pizza blog, This Is Pizza. As a contributor for both Slice and A Hamburger Today, he is contractually obligated to say he loves pizza and burgers in equal amounts. Which is to say he is a polygamist.