The Italian Sausage Burger - Pause
44 hours! The amount of time I went without actively participating in Portland Burger Week. We've been talking about unleashing a burger review site for years and it was finally the right time. I told my friends I'd build the site that would give them a platform to spew their burger nonsense. But I broke their now grease filled hearts when I said I wasn't going to participate in the consumption of delicious, melty $5 burgers. Tragic, I know. I started off the week strong with healthier items, including 3 salads. Go me! But the allure of close-up (NSFW) shots of newfangled burger icons on Instagram left me drooling and in a state of despair.
Did I mention I'm getting married in 24 days? It's exciting and while I might be dim to what a wedding entails I know there are things I should be doing and things I shouldn't be doing. Eating 33 burgers (Burger Odyssey) three weeks before I say "I DO" is the latter of the two. So where did I go wrong? Did I go wrong? We had a great meeting with our venue coordinator and day of coordinator (Man, this sounds fancy, it's not. We found them on Ashley Madison). Marc, my friend that is setting up a photo booth for us was also there. He was headed to find a Burger Week burger joint. Sadly, White Owl was closed due to a power outage. He informed me of his plan to hit Pause on Interstate. The info was just too real and Hannah ("Feyoncé") and I were high off our meeting. We were ready for our burger rewards.
A group of gingham print shirts are standing on the corner outside of Pause clearly discussing how large each square is on their shirt and how each drop of smoked tomato jam resembles a Rorschach test on it. We get inside and it's fairly empty. We see our friends and they had already ordered our burgers for us - Quick shout out to technology, text messages are the future. Our burgers finally come and it's a site for soar eyes. It feels like I've been waiting a lifetime for this moment, but really only 44 hours. The Italian Sausage Burger is half pork, half beef. It tastes like the cook pounded a bag of sausages with a hammer and formed the remnants into a patty. IT WAS DELICIOUS! Where the burger excels though is the condiment compliments; whole milk mozzarella, sweated onions and peppers, smoked tomato jam and roasted red pepper aioli on a Portland French Onion Kaiser roll. Each condiment/topping had its place. I might be biased because this was my first and ONLY Burger Week burger, but I highly recommend it.
TIP: Pairs well with a Miller High Life.