Skip to main content
PDX Sliders, a Sellwood food truck making tiny burgers, would appear to have some fans at National Geographic.
The website for the official magazine of the National Geographic Society ranked the little burger cart fourth place on its list of the best burgers in America.
It was beaten out by only such luminaries as Glee Donuts and Burgers in California, Neighborhood Eats in Georgia and first-place winner Bros Sandwich Shack in North Carolina.
But it turns out that National Geographic came at their best-burger list with the spirit of a cartographer. They compiled three different lists of best burgers—man, machine, and "expert."
The machine, Yelp, was the one that ranked wee PDX Sliders 4th best in the country—as determined by the combined user rankings in their "burger" category.
For perspective on Yelp lists, a 2014 Yelp list of the best restaurants in the country named an already-closed food cart, Built 2 Grill, as a better restaurant than the French Laundry. The Waffle Window, on the same list, slightly edged out equally famed Per Se.
This is no knock on PDX Sliders, however—who are also taking over burger duties at the upcoming Ancestry Brewing brewpub in Sellwood.
The cart won the Judge's Choice Award in WW's 2014 Eat Mobile food cart festival. In 2015, their sandwich, the Tilikum—a stack of buttermilk fried chicken, house-made BBQ sauce, creamy slaw and aioli on a ciabatta bun—won the audience prize at the Bite of Oregon food fest.
But at National Geographic, only the machines like Oregon.
Their "man" liked the Double Big Earl at Big Earl's Greasy Eats, while the "expert," George Motz of the Travel Network's Hamburger America and host of the Burger Land show on the Travel Channel, didn't like any burgers in Portland either.
Motz did, however, really like a steamed cheeseburger from Connecticut.
Willamette Week