Hey, I'm Michael Russell from The Oregonian and we're here
in Southeast Portland at Mid City Smash Burger.
What is a smash burger? It's exactly what it sounds like.
It's a burger patty that you smash down
with a heavy metal weight, it makes it very thin and very crispy.
They put American cheese on top of that, put them together, it's basically a double quarter pounder.
Beautiful burger, they use Franz's buns,
it's one of my favorite smash burgers in town, and that's why we're here.
My name is Mike Aldridge. I'm the owner
of Mid City Smash Burger. We're on 11th and Southeast Stark in Portland, Oregon.
The last few years, Portland's been known for big, bulky,
messy hamburgers, and even when I was in New Orleans, I couldn't find a small,
eatable cheeseburger that wasn't, you know, McDonald's or Burger King or something like that,
and so I started making them one night for some friends over some drinks and cocktails and,
you know, the next thing I knew I was selling them off my porch a couple weeks later.
I had someone that had a truck and I was like I'm gonna move back to Portland and do the burger
thing back there. The name stuck. I was living in Mid City New Orleans and so after we got this
spot, it seemed kind of perfect because we're kind of right in the middle of Portland now too.
It's a small amount of beef pressed really thin on a really hot griddle surface,
and the idea is to get a sear across all of it with nice crispy edges.
So I kind of mix a bunch of different seasonings that I found work really well together.
We use a heavy duty Dexter paint scraper with a thick handle. We've already broken two of them.
It's a super fun process, you know, all of our forearms are kind of sore right now because it's
a lot of this the whole time.
When people are asking me how to cook this in your house, the first thing I say is get a bottle
of degreaser and then turn your fire alarm off because it gets really smoky and really greasy.
People get nervous, and you don't get the right sear.
You know, we get the fat from the cheese and the sauce and the richness of the bun.
Smash sauce is a mayo and mustard base, for the most part. There's like 16 ingredients in it.
For me that's the real star of the show. The burger is just kind of a vessel for the sauce.
But everything works really well together because you get the crunchiness from the
burger and the onions and there's just, basically everything you'd want on a burger is in the sauce.
Super simple, you know, our menu is only three items long.
This is just a fun, easy to eat cheeseburger.
You know, it's fast food but it's good, local fast food.
We've sold almost 2,500 burgers in a month and a half so, I mean, it speaks for itself. I guess.
Is it good?
It's so good, such a good burger.