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Burger Madness is a seeded tournament pitting 64 Portland patties against each other. Our critics ate through the best Bistro Burgers, Bar Burgers, and Brewery Burgers and Burger Burgers in Portland—and will reveal their picks round by round until the best burger in Portland is crowned.
This weekend, we're revealing the winners in the first round of 64. Here are the brewpub burgers.
And here are all the Burger Madness Round 64 Results.
Here are the results, with full explanations below.
MATCHUP #1: Fat Head's (1) vs. Rogue Eastside (16)
Fat Head’s (1)
131 NW 13th Ave., 503-820-7721, fatheadsportland.com. 11:30 am-11 pm Monday-Thursday, 11:30 am-midnight Friday-Saturday, 11:30 am-10 pm Sunday.
Everything at Fat Head’s is supersized—hugely hoppy IPAs, wings smoked before they’re fried, and a basic burger ($13.50 with house potato chips) that comes with cheese and bacon on top of 7 ounces of beef. That burger is one of the more restrained offerings, at least compared to one topped with kimchi and a sunny-side-up egg and another topped with pulled-pork chili.
The burger has a very classic feel, with a half-melted slice of American cheese, a big flop of romaine lettuce and a splash of mayo. Unfortunately, on our most recent visit the “medium medium” was way overdone, without a speck of pink.
Rogue Eastside Pilot Pub (16)
928 SE 9th Ave., 503-517-0660, rogue.com. 11 am-11 pm Sunday-Wednesday, 11 am-1 am Thursday-Saturday.
(Rogue defeated Portland Brewing in the play-in round matchup of regional brands with Portland spots.)
Rogue’s burger is a half-pounder ($13 with chips, fries or tots) made with Kobe-style beef, and has a pleasant gameyness. With typical Rogueishness, the pub calls it the “World’s Greatest Burger.” (It is not.) It’s served on a Pearl Bakery bun, which was dried out by the time we got it just before close, and it’s said to have “wasabi mayo” but that didn’t read for me.
WINNER: This one was a lot closer than we expected thanks to a huge performance from Kobe (beef). But a burger is more than a great patty—a bad bun and sauce will doom it. Fat Head's survives a close one, but is in trouble when the competition gets tougher.
MATCHUP #2: Deschutes (8) vs. Kennedy School (9)
Deschutes (8)
210 NW 11th Ave., 503-296-4906, deschutesbrewery.com. 11 am-10 pm Sunday-Wednesday, 11 am-11 pm Thursday, 11 am-midnight Friday-Saturday.
With a “medium medium” there’s no window for error—it’s easy to get away with a blood-drenched medium-rare or a dried-out medium-well, but we all intrinsically understand what a perfect pink medium looks like. The burger at the Deschutes brewpub in the Pearl ($13 with fries) was the only burger I tried during this project that hit the Platonic ideal, the Double R Ranch beef squirting a light pink juice when squeezed hard. Unfortunately, it was on a bun that was a little stale and topped with Tillamook cheddar that barely read as cheddar. I also didn’t get much flavor from the housemade pickles.
Kennedy School (McMenamins) (9)
5736 NE 33rd Ave., 503-249-3983, mcmenamins.com. 7 am-midnight Sunday-Thursday, 7 am-1 am Friday-Saturday.
The burger at Kennedy School’s Courtyard Restaurant ($11.75 with fries or tots) uses Country Natural beef, the brand I tend to prefer, and comes with beautiful grill marks that leave little lines of tangy smoke. It goes onto a really nice brioche bun, with shredded lettuce, pickles and sauce. My only complaint was that it was a tad overcooked.
WINNER: Kennedy School takes this one with help from the bench. Both patties performed well—the Deschutes patty actually performed a little better—but the brioche bun and pickles came together to bring this one home for McMenamins.
MATCHUP #3: Ecliptic (5) vs. Stormbreaker (12)
Ecliptic (5)
825 N Cook St., 503-265-8002, eclipticbrewing.com. 11 am-10 pm Monday-Thursday, 11 am-11 pm Friday-Saturday, 11 am-9 pm Sunday.
The monster house burger ($14 with fries) is served on a plump potato roll that crushes pleasantly in the fist. It’s topped with a lot of aggressive ingredients—pancetta, red onions, melted Gruyere, and Russian dressing—which are applied gently, bringing it into perfect alignment.
My server didn’t ask how you want the burger done, and mine came out medium-well, a little overcooked for my taste. It’s also arguably a little salty thanks to the pancetta and Gruyere. But it’s a damned good burger.
StormBreaker (12)
832 N Beech St., 503-703-4516, stormbreakerbrewing.com. 11 am-10 pm Sunday-Monday, 11 am-11 pm Tuesday-Thursday, 11 am-midnight Friday-Saturday.
On paper, this burger from a homey Mississippi patio bar looks like it could be a bracket buster. StormBreaker’s most popular offering is the Jucy Lucy ($12 with chips), an invention of the heavily cheesed upper Midwest in which the patty is actually stuffed with fontina to keep it extra moist. For decadence’s sake, it’s then topped with bacon jam, lettuce, tomato and herbed aioli.
Unfortunately, that bacon jam is a super-sweet concoction that smells like onions covered in burnt sugar, undoing everything going right around it—call it the Steph Curry perimeter defense of Portland burgers.
WINNER:
This was the kind of beatdown where the parents leave and the cheerleaders just stand with their hands on their hips, waiting for the clock to run out. Ecliptic's seniors from the practice quad got to play minutes in garbage time and Stormbreaker's coach got an angry call from the program's biggest donor.
MATCHUP #4: Wayfinder (4) vs. Migration (13)
Wayfinder (4)
304 SE 2nd Ave., 503-718-2337, wayfinder.beer. 11 am-10 pm Sunday-Wednesday, 11 am-midnight Thursday-Saturday.
The house diner burger is a thick half-pound patty cooked on a griddle. Wayfinder doesn’t get too cute—it’s a simple slab of juicy beef topped with just the right proportions of lettuce, pickles and onion. You have your choice of cheese, and I picked bue.
But the burger’s best feature is actually the wonderful bun, which is soft and buttery. Sadly, the patty itself was a little overdone and that blue cheese made it way too salty.
Migration (13)
2828 NE Glisan St., 503-206-5221, migrationbrewing.com. 11 am-midnight Monday-Saturday, 11 am-10 pm Sunday.
Migration is about as sportsy as Portland brewpubs get. The next time you’re going out to watch a Blazer game, it’s highly recommended. The classic burger ($10 with fries) is on super-squishy sesame seed bun that just barely survived intact to the end of the patty. The patty itself is very thin, but still maintained a little pink. There’s no cheese, but it was lathered up in a house sauce that juxtaposed nicely with the zucchini pickles.
WINNER: Migration is looking like it could be a Cinderella story. The 13 seed nudges Wayfinder out here on the strength of those zucchini pickles and delightful bun. Now that Wayfinder's lost, hopefully they can let the burgers condition themselves, get those tanks fired up and make some of their own beer.
MATCHUP #5: Hopworks (6) vs. Great Notion (11)
Hopworks (6)
2944 SE Powell Blvd., 503-232-4677, hopworksbeer.com. 11 am-11 pm Sunday-Thursday, 11 am-midnight Friday-Saturday.
The Brewer’s Burger is a regular patty on a regular bun with mayo, lettuce, tomato and onion. You have to upgrade if you want cheese, but there’s a sauce included, so I got barbecue, which was on the sweet side. The burger had a little pink, and the toppings included a lot of onion and mayo..
Great Notion (11)
2204 NE Alberta St., No. 101, 503-548-4491, greatnotionpdx.com. Noon-10 pm Sunday-Thursday, noon-11 pm Friday-Saturday.
Great Notion’s notions tend to be a little crazy. The year-old Alberta Street brewpub is known for wild-fruit sours and the hazy, citrus-drenched IPAs that took the city by storm. One of these, Juice Jr., is named the state’s Beer of the Year in our annual Beer Guide, which is on newsstands now.
That spirit extends to the food, especially the Great American Cheeseburger ($12 with waffle fries or salad), which comes standard with pepper bacon, organic American cheese, house ketchup and crispy fried onions.
The Cascade Natural beef was nice and pink, and the bacon was a nice treat on a $12 burger. The big problem was the fried onions, which were way overdone and too chunky, overwhelming everything else inside the bun.
WINNER: Great Notion carries the day. It'll be hard to advance much further given the issues with the fried onions, but they handled Hopworks' dadburger.
MATCHUP #6: Burnside (3) vs. Ex Novo (14)
Burnside (3)
701 E Burnside St., 503-946-8151, burnsidebrewco.com. 11 am-10 pm Sunday-Tuesday, 11 am-11 pm Wednesday-Thursday, 11 am-midnight Friday-Saturday.
The burger ($13 with fries, soup or salad) has lots of salty-sweet char, almost as if trail mix had been pulverized into micro-fine dust and caramelized onto the outside. The patty sits like a king atop a throne of shaved lettuce. It also has a great pop of milky fry sauce that contrasts with a pop of pickle. If there’s any Achilles heel, it’s the bun, which is a little too stiff and dry.
Ex Novo (14)
326 N Flint Ave., 503-894-8251, exnovobrew.com. 3-10 pm Monday-Thursday, 3-11 pm Friday, 11 am-11 pm Saturday, 11 am-10 pm Sunday.
Ex Novo’s Brewburger ($14 with fries or salad) is an ambitious effort, starting with house-ground beef that’s topped with bacon beer jam, smoked Gouda and cardboard-thick slices of pickle. Those pickles really dominated, giving the whole thing a sourness that combined with the salty Gouda to make a burger that tasted a little like a gose.
WINNER: Burnside ends up winning easily. There were some who projected this game as a heavy upset, but in the end it wasn't close. Ex Novo's got pickle problems.
MATCHUP #7: Lompoc (10) vs. 10 Barrel (7)
Lompoc (10)
1620 NW 23rd Ave., 503-894-9374, lompocbrewing.com. 11 am-1 am Monday-Thursday, 11 am-2 am Friday-Saturday, 11 am-midnight Sunday.
Portland is not a mustard town, at least when it comes to burgers. Lompoc Tavern is the exception, serving up a burger with a nice splatter of yellow and even giving you a squeeze bottle on the side in case you want more.
My burger came upside down, with the toppings on the bottom, and with the huge patty showing the type of smooth edges that suggests some sort of mechanized process. It was way overdone, but I loved the flavor anyway.
10 Barrel
1411 NW Flanders St., 503-224-1700, 10barrel.com. 11 am-11 pm Sunday-Thursday, 11 am-midnight Friday-Saturday.
This Bend-born brewery was sold to Anheuser-Busch back in 2014. People who criticize the corporate suds are misguided: Whitney Burnside, the brewer at the pub in the Pearl, is one of the most creative and talented people in local beer.
However, you’re fine bashing the burger ($12 with fries or chips) as being a little too Applebee’s-y. It’s shaped like a patty-cutter and came slightly overdone. It needs more salt and a new bun—this one was dense enough to pass for day-old.
WINNER: Lompoc had it locked down from the tip-off, and this ends up being one the selection committee needs to explain. Why was 10 Barrel the #7 seed, again?
MATCHUP #8: Breakside (2) vs. Sasquatch (15)
Breakside (2)
820 NE Dekum St., 503-719-6475, breakside.com. 11:30 am-10 pm Sunday-Thursday, 11:30 am-11 pm Friday-Saturday.
Breakside just opened their second brewpub, next to the New Seasons in Slabtown. Breakside’s beer is in high demand, yes, but so is their food—and the burger is performing like an MVP.
It’s $16 with waffle fries, but it’s a hulking half-pound of Kobe-style beef from Boise’s Snake River Farms that has a beautiful char on the outside. The server didn’t ask how we wanted it, and instead brought it out with a perfect pink center. The patty is lathered up with Rogue Smokey Blue cheese.
Sasquatch (15)
6440 SW Capitol Highway, 503-402-1999, sasquatchbrewery.com. 3-10 pm Monday-Thursday, noon-11 pm Friday-Saturday, noon-9 pm Sunday.
The name conjures images of the big and hairy, but the grass-fed burger ($11.50) at this busy Hillsdale brewpub shows admirable restraint. It’s rather petite by the standards to which I’d become accustomed—a one-hander with an aggressive sauce. The server didn’t inquire about doneness, and instead served it medium-well. The beef was very good, though, and the burger really would have benefited from a little more pink.
WINNER: Sasquatch came out swinging, but Breakside wins another surprisingly close matchup. Breakside's bun could be fresher, the pickles are not quite bright enough, and the stewy caramelized onions get a little lost. But that big, beefy Kobe patty simply overpowered the petite Sasquatch burger in the paint.
Here's Where You Can Fill Out Your Burger Madness Bracket
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The 16 Best Classic Burgers in Portland