Brunch Box

Newsflash: I’m way into junk food.  Certainly I appreciate fresh fruits and veggies or a lean and lo-cal lunch but, if given the choice, I’d rather eat pizza or something.  In this regard, I’m not exceptional; the prevalence of obesity in America says as much.  But, perhaps exceptionally, I have no dietary restrictions and, thankfully, I also happen to be in a position to basically eat whatever I want whenever I want. 

That’s right -- as a relatively young man with a relatively active lifestyle and a relatively efficient metabolism, I can eat junk food with relatively little consequence.  Still, I believe in balance.  Good or bad, all foodstuffs have nutritional value.  So though I succeed in eating a bit of everything (good and bad), I’m no worse for wear.  But I don’t want to talk about that.  I want to talk about hamburgers, specifically the ones served at Brunch Box.

 

Brunch Box got its start a few years ago as a food cart on 5th and Stark in downtown Portland.  In April of this year (on 4/20 -- coincidence?), the owners expanded to a cozy hole in the wall on 9th and Alder.  Throwing caution to the wind by unabashedly dangling artery-clogging items in front of a notably health-conscious city, the menu features greasy burgers along with greasy breakfast sandwiches.  Patrons can fill out a card and build their own, selecting biscuits or buns or pepper-jack or pickles, or choose from the list of in-house creations.  

Among these creations might be the key to the cart’s success.  When Brunch Box opened, it quickly gained notoriety for serving something called the YouCanHasCheesburger (the name is a play on some internet thing).  This burger, like all their other burgers, is hand-patted black angus beef.  It’s accompanied by cheese, grilled onions, lettuce and tomato and, here’s the thing, it comes between two texas-toast grilled-cheese sandwiches.  It was a novel concept then and people still show up just to try it now.  I had it once before, just to say that I’d eaten it.  It was gooooood.  It came fresh off the griddle, hot to the touch, wrapped in butcher-paper growing progressively translucent.  It went down easy, leaving a congealed coating on the roof of my mouth and in the back of my throat.  Indeed, I think it safe to say that the YouCanHasCheesburger effectively lubricated my entire digestive tract.  Nonetheless, it didn’t blow my mind.  Or hurt my stomach.  So there’s that.

 

 

Over time, Brunch Box achieved local renown.  Soon enough though, they had to top the YouCanHasCheesburger.  Enter the Redonkadonk.  And the Monstrosity.  For a limited time, they even offered this beast.  The Redonkadonk is re-diculous; a burger with bacon, ham, spam, a fried egg and veggies all sandwiched between two grilled-cheeses.  The Monstrosity goes one better (or worse, depending on how you look at it) by doubling the meat and cheese and omitting the veggies.  Both burgers are tall, gut-busting stacks, though I’ve never eaten one.  I once overheard someone detailing how he ate one of them.  He said it was so greasy that it practically melted in his mouth and slid down his gullet.  I’ll let you decide how appetizing that sounds.

Anyway, the whole point of all this is that, until recently, I didn’t eat at Brunch Box regularly.  Despite being a junk-food aficionado and a veritable burger-hound, I probably ate less than ten burgers there over the course of four years (compare that to the roughly 100-some I eat every year).  Sure, I knew the burgers were awesome.  And it was clear that others agreed; lines formed every day for lunch and, it seemed to me, Brunch Box was among the more successful food carts in the city.  At an average of $7.25 ($8 to build your own), the burgers all but guaranteed profitability and surely helped facilitate the brick-and-mortar opening. But therein lies the kicker -- at that price, the burgers didn’t appeal to me. 

Call me cheap, but don’t call me unreasonable.  Cart meals (at least the ones I typically eat) range from six to eight bucks.  But that’s for actual meals -- meat AND potatoes -- not a lone, albeit big sandwich.  And a burger begs for buddies.  Really, what’s a burger without fries?  Who wants an 8-dollar sidewalk-sandwich with no chips, no drink?*  Not me, that’s who.  So I didn’t partake. 

Lately though, in the new space on 9th, I can’t get enough.  I’m there at least once a week.  The reason?  The model changed.  At the new location, you can get fries, onion rings, a fountain drink or a milkshake, and you can sit down.  I can get a full, satisfying meal now for like nine bucks.  Consequently, I’m now fully addicted to Brunch-Box burgers.

 

I like the Big Kahuna best, I think.  It’s got ham, grilled pineapple, an onion ring, barbecue sauce and veggies.  The ingredients are fresh -- ripe red tomato, crispy green lettuce.  The onions, something that make or break a burger for me (I can’t/won’t stand raw, crunchy onions), are grilled and softened for maximum sweetness.  And the beef?  It’s fatty enough to be flavorful but lean enough to sate.  The whole thing is expertly prepared and arranged; it sticks together.  Even with all that juicy stuff, my bun is never soggy.  How is that possible?  The fries, too, are simply sublime.  They always come hot as shit, crispy but not oily, and liberally littered with large crystals of salt.  The devil is in the details, and the dudes at Brunch Box do it right.

We all love junk food.  It’s yummy.  It’s savory, it’s sweet.  It satisfies one of our deepest needs in a very pleasing way.  But junk food is junk -- it’s bad for us.  Even though the junk food at Brunch Box is fresh and natural (aside from the American cheese**), it’s still not too good for me.  And, one of these days, all this junk food will catch up with me.  Yeah, my diet is pretty well-balanced and I come from good stock, but my wife often reminds me, “you won’t be able to eat like this forever.”  She’s right.  Eventually, my metabolism will slow.  My lifestyle will go from active to less active.  Plaque will accrue in my arteries, adipocytes will converge on my waist, and I will no longer be able to eat as much junk food with relatively little consequence.  C’est la vie.  GTWYC, I guess.

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*Note: you can get chips (the little bag) and a can of soda at the cart for $2, which strikes me as unnecessarily expensive.

**Topic for another time: why is the most processed (manufactured from ingredients and not legally allowed to be sold as ‘cheese’) of cheeses called ‘American’ cheese?