A lunch at Gruner of grilled burger on a potato bun with smoky bacon, fontina (also had the choice of cheddar instead), pickled onions, bread & butter pickles, aïoli & arugula, served with fried smashed potatoes.
The Cascadia meat patty was very rich thanks to its high fat content- dripping down my hands actually. I wasn’t quite a fan of the poppy seed potato bun as the top bun kept the crunchy but soft top but then the bottom bun it acted like a sponge that soaked up those drippings and became super soggy at the bottom like it needed to be wrung out it was too full of juices. I believe the buns are made in house (like the breads they offer at dinner)- maybe it needed more resting time upside down to get the bottom half to stand up for the burger, or a cut that gave more bread proportion to the bottom.
Definitely the bun experience I had was a surprise since I had heard such raves about it, and I didn’t really need that much extra fat percentage in the burger- I think Portlanders just love fat even more then I do (even though I do too). I can still see why this burger made the BurgerQuest top 10 list of burgers in Portland, but in my opinion it wasn’t as good as the Toro Bravo burger (also available at Tasty N Sons which is where I had it) despite Nick Zukin’s ranking in Willamette Weekly. I can’t articulate well why this burger with 25% fat was too much, although the Toro Burger at 20-22% is not and delicious to me, except the mouthfeel and drippings just went past a tipping point to me.
I loved the bacon, fontina (which seemed to be a better match given the Alpine cuisine Gruner serves), peppery arugula and there was something special about that currywurst ketchup that I wanted to slather over everything. I was disappointed by the very small portion of smashed fried potatoes which I had to carefully spread out for some crunch with a small dip of ketchup since there were only 5 slivers of them.
What looked very lovely was my co-worker’s much healthier lunch of green beans, blackberries, goat cheese, hazelnuts, duck, black currant vinaigrette, crispy shallots. This inspires me to make my own version at home one day and try a green bean salad creation instead of a sauteed version.
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