testing table entry

.		Burgerville	Dea's In n Out	Killer Burger	Skyline Restaurant	Grand Total
.	Howard		8	4	2	14
.	Jay	3	3	5	2	13
.	John		3	4	2	9
.	Grand Total	3	14	13	6	36

The BURGER Project - Killer Burger

Today we headed out to Killer Burger  at 4644 NE Sandy Blvd. The Oregonian did not include this eatery in its review of the 10 best burgers in town. Big oversight. This burger was fantastic

Howard, Jay, and John hanging 'round the street corner

As you can see from the photo below, the 3 of us brought the median age up quite a few years. It's a tiny spot long and narrow. When people are seated at all the tables it's tough to get through the crowd to place your order. There is a nice energy to the place. 

Long narrow space when you walk in

A fun thing is being able to see the grill and prep area when you order.

Cooking the burgers

Our burgers getting prepped and cooked

The timing seems to work out okay; once we got our order in, we found a place to sit. I'm pretty happy anticipating lunch.

Waiting with a smile on my face

With a smile like that on my face waiting; imagine the look on my face when this came out. Oh! That chees is belted perfectly on the patty; nice kaiser roll to hold all that meat and grease. The pickles were fantastic

YUM

Look how nice and crispy the edges are on that burger; but it's not dry at all. 

Jay pauses for the photo before digging in

The lady over Jay's right shoulder was pretty amused by us old guys taking pictures and comparing burgers so closely. She asked if we were from out of town. I said "Kind of; Beaverton".

And notice; they server BEER! Jay had the Ninkais IPA which he really liked.

Jay ready to take a bite. Notice how we are all smiling!

Another look. Jay, John and I all ordered the same: Classic Burger; cheese burger with bacon.

John ready to dig in.

Ratings & Comments
 Note that the "Overall" rating column is not an average of the burger, side, drink, ambience, and service, It is a separate rating that pulls together all the personal intabigles.

Hamburger

Ambience & Atmosphere

Overall

I think Killer Burger is the best of the three places we've visited so far. We definitely recommend it

Chipotle Chicken Tortilla Soup

Not a cook? Doesn't matter. You can totally do this simple recipe for chicken tortilla soup.

I'm a fan of chicken tortilla soup; I have a bunch of recipes most of which I haven't tried yet. I saw this recipe in the 30 minute meal section of the February/March 2012 Cook's Country magazine and decided it was worth a try. It was delicious. The only real prep is chopping the red peppers; most everything else is store bought stuff. You can find my recipe here.

The line up. I forgot to pose the 2 cans of low-sodium chicken broth.

Ingredients minus the 2 cans of chicken broth

Shred the store-bought rotisserie chicken; chop the bell pepper; chop on smokey jalapeno; juice the lime; empty the picante sauce and chicken broth in measuring cups. Easy-peasey

Ready for the soup pot

Slice 4 tortillas into strips

Tortillas ready for crisping in the oven

And put in the oven for about 8 minutes. I was worried that since they weren't fried they wouldn't taste good. No worries.

Tortilla strips crisping in the oven

While the tortilla strips crisp sauté the red pepper for a few minutes 'til it gets a little color.

Sauté the red peppers in 1 Tablespoon of vegetable oil

Add everything but the lime juice and tortilla strips and simmer for a few minutes. When the chicken is warmed through turn off the heat and add the lime juice and tortilla strips and serve

Ready for serving

Serve and top with grated cheddar cheese and diced avocados

Dinner is served

I think I made it look harder than it is; really this is very very simple and very very tasty.

Try it and let me know what you think.

The BURGER Project - Skyline Drive In

The Oregonian ranked Skyline Drive In as the 2nd best hamburger in the greater Portland area. The rankings can be found here. They ranked Dea's In & Out 9th. We definitely found Skyline wanting and nowhere close to Dea's. That damn liberal elite media is at it again (Tongue definitely in cheek)

The entrance for our 2nd BURGER project establishment

Getting ready to go in

"Am I making myself clear?"

The hamburger rated a 2 for us; that is 1 step above "Horrible". We found the meat to be thin, dry, and small. The Ameican cheese wasn't close to melted. The buns were not very fresh. Now the bacon was another story. The bacon was sublime and almost lifted the burger to a 3; almost I said. We only needed 2 napkins, compared to the 4 napkins at Deas.

Skyline Cheeseburger; add bacon. The bacon was sublime

The fries were warm, not hot and not as tasty as those at Deas. I had tots and I normally love tots. They were hot but a little mealy inside.

Digging In!

Tots! I love tots!

The shakes were good but made from soft serve ice cream. Jay had an extra thick and it lived up to its name. They were much smaller than Dea's Funny thing; there is the price for the shake and you can pay for extra flavor or extra thick. They are saying in effect: "Here's the price for a mediocre shake; if you want it to taste good and have some ice cream in it you have to pay an extra $1"

Jay's extra-thick chocolate milk shake

The location is nice up in the west hills on Skyline drive. We got a booth with windows on two sides so we could take in the view.

Nice view from the window. It snowed a touch while we ate.

Service was okay. It's nice that you sit down and they come and take your order. So the ambience was nice but the service was only so-so. They have lots of rules posted; I don't like places where you have to follow the establishment's rules to have a decent meal.

We rate Skyline Drive In as 2 stars (or 2 napkins). Living on its reputation not its quality.

The BURGER project inaugural run

In December the A&E section of the Oregonian had a piece on the 10 best classic burgers in Portland. The list looked reasonable but I couldn't be sure I agreed with the ratings when I realized they left Red Coach and Beaverton Char Burger off the list. This called for some investigation.

I'm not up to the project on my own, I knew I'd need some other expertise. So I asked a couple of buddies to join me. Jay Watson has a science background and I knew I could count on him to help build an excellent measurement tool. John Lee has lived in Portland most of his life and has the kind of background history that I could never match having lived here only 30 years.

First thing we had to do was come up with a name. We've settled on The BURGER Project where Burger is an acronym for  Bulbous Urbanites Researching  Gutbomb Eatery Repasts. My son Andrew showed me how to create an online form using Google Docs which will feed a spreadsheet. A list of places to visit was called for. We started with the Oregonian's list and will add our own as we go on. Our current list is:

• Beaverton Char Burger
• Canyon Grill
• Dea's In & Out
• George's Giant Hamburgers
• Helvetia Tavern
• Humdinger Drive-In
• Mike's Drive-In
• Red Coach
• Roake's
• Skyline Restaurant
• Stanich's
• Killer Burger

We  had a group, a name, a goal, a willingness to eat plenty of grease. We had a few delays over the holidays but finally got our inaugural run in today. We hit Dea's In & Out in Gresham; it's not related to the California In & Out chain; it must pre-date that chain by many years. A buddy of mine at work used to work there from  1983 to1984. He suggested the fries.


It was a 45 minute drive from Beaverton to the DES (Dreaded East Side) but well worth it. 

Ready to enter

My order came out first so I thought I'd grab a pic before the carnage. This was my first encounter with a long burger in over 30 years. My first week in Caldwell Idaho a group of my new best friends and I walked off campus to "The Long Bun" where I got my first view and taste of a hamburger that isn't round. I loved it then (of course I probably had had a few beers). Loved it this time too

Ready to be enjoyed. A long burger with cheese and bacon; fries with special sauce and a root beer milkshake

May 27, 2012 update. I've been learning more about photo editing. Here's a little better version of a similar picture to that above

Notice the trays. Jay doesn't have any fries; turns out he's not fond of greasy potatoes. WTF?

Jay and John ready to dig in.

Research is more than just eating. Jay shows off the double long burger he had. 

John uses a paper version of our form to tally his results

All done!

We rate hamburger, side dish, drink, service, ambience, and overall score. Our scale runs like this

1 - Horrible 2 - Not the worst ever 3. Average 4. Pretty damn good 5. Epic

Average ratings for the day: 

• Hamburger: 4
• Fries: 5 (John and I both had the fries which are perfect; not greasy; perfectly crisp; and awesome secret sauce)
• Drink: 3 (Scores of 2, 3, and 4) Jay rated his chocolate shake a 4: "good value for soft serve ice cream; he could taste the chocolate." Jay ever the scientist notes that it is a 24 oz serving. John felt there wasn't enough flavor and the soft serve ice cream base was a little grainy
• Ambience and atmosphere: 2.67  I started to rate it a 4 as a nice mix between a diner and a burger joint. But then I visited the men's room on the way out. I don't think it had been cleaned since the 80's.
• Overall score: 3.3  We all really enjoyed it; rating is like judging gymnastics and ice skating. We have to leave a ceiling for later entries.

First day out was a blast; we'll be headed out on Saturdays as our schedules allow. 

South Africa Flights

We purchased our tickets for our flight to South Africa this week. We'll fly from Portland to Washington DC. Then transfer to South African Airlines for our flight to Johannesburg with a stop in Dakar, Senegal. Our flight looks something like this.

Flight total will be 17 hours 40 minutes. With the layovers the flights will take about 25 hours and 45 mintues. A full day of travel plus a little bit

December 2011

We had a very busy December and I didn't get a chance to post pictures of individual events. So, here is a retrospective of the month.

November was a wet month but the rain stopped the day after Thanksgiving, which is usually when I get the Christmas lights up. It was very dry until a few days after Christmas. Here is the house bedecked in Christmas lights.

 

On December 3 a group of us took part in the Sherwood Merry Walkers "blanket walk".  We started at the Sherwood YMCA and headed into downtown Sherwood where a street party was underway. There were 10 of us altogether; here is the largest group shot I got.

L-R Howard, Ray, Paula, Norm, Terry, Herb, Dianne, Jay
(Not shown: Carla, Mary Ann, Jay and Karen)

Afterward we went to our house for a Minestrone soup dinner, drinks, and games.

My team took an afternoon to celebrate our many accomplishments of the year.

Bernadette ready to roll hard!

Chelea and Terell sizing things up

Denny and Bernadette watching the others and waiting their turns

Fletch is decked out.

I"m ready to turn and burn. Oh, um the pins are the other direction?

Chelea celebrating while Denny and Bernadette take a more subdued approach

Terell, Chelea, Fletch, Bernadette, Howard, Denny. What a great team. I'm the luckiest manager at OHSU

 Andrew and Henriët came to town on Christmas day. We had a crab feed at the house on Tuesday night.

Sarah and Henriët. Two fantastic women.

The clan: Sara, Jeff, Carla, Andrew, Henriët

 Before heading out for New Year's Eve celebration I got Henriët and Andrew for a picture in front of Henriët's mother's artwork.

Henriët and Andrew in front of Jeanette's art.

On New Year's we had a little dinner party for the 6 of us. Andrew and Henriët will be leaving in the morning. I was able to talk Andrew and Jeff into nice poses.

This has been the most memorable Christmas holiday in years. It is so nice to have these wonderful women in our sons' lives.