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Portland is basking in burgers. From smash burgers, tavern burgers and sliders to butchers burgers, hamburguesas and steam burgers, there are beefy riffs everywhere you look. Enter the Lone Star Burger Bar, which is practically its own category and a worthy contender for one of Portland’s tastiest burgers.
Opened in 2024 after starting as a pop-up in the former La Taq space on Northeast Killingsworth Street, Lone Star is the brainchild of Podnah’s Pit’s Rodney Muirhead. In case the giant flag and portrait of Willie Nelson don’t give it away, this joint is an ode to Muirhead’s East Texas roots. Its menu skews minimalist with just four types of burgers, a few hot dogs, fries, and those oh-so-delicious onion rings (more on that later). There are cocktails and a respectable beer selection to wash it all down.
So what in tarnation is a “Texas-themed burger” anyway? For Muirhead, it all comes down to the quality, blend and thickness of the meat. The typical Lone Star burger falls somewhere between smash burger and classic no-frills restaurant or drive-in burger. It isn’t overly thin or thick despite the hefty half-pound size. In other words, the kind of burgers that are ubiquitous in parts of the country that haven’t been swept up in trends. Just quality beef seasoned properly. Given its proximity (literally next door) to one of Portland’s pioneering barbecue joints known for serving up juicy smoked brisket, access to the good stuff is one of Lone Star’s advantages.
“We are using brisket, chuck, and sirloin. For me, the big difference in the patties is that we grind the meat fresh daily, so it’s not the compressed ground beef you would get from a commercial meat packer,” Muirhead says before adding his insight on what makes his burgers distinctly Texan. “I wanted a more steakhouse-style burger that could show off the flavor of the meats we use. It’s just a nice thick burger that can cook long enough to get a good sear on the outside.”
Deviating from the Lone Star State into Colorado and New Mexico, Muirhead draws from his travels of the Southwest and also takes advantage of the big roaster sitting out front to make his Green Chile Burger ($15), a menu standout with just the right amount of smoky heat from the chiles nestled in American cheese, white onions, lettuce and a soft buttery Dos Hermanos brioche bun.
Lone Star’s menu may be small, but it keeps things interesting with its weekly special burger. On a recent visit, the towering Armadillo Burger ($16) offered a twangy take on In-and-Out’s infamous Animal Style burger, but gave it a twist with smoky caramelized onions, savory spicy-sweet jalapeño bacon jam, and school bus orange cheese oozing out from two fatty patties. Something about the combination of smoked caramelized onions and salty American cheese makes each bite more addictive.
“The specials are a combination of myself and other staff batting around ideas and tweaking them several times before going out to the public,” says Muirhead, who has unveiled specials like the cheese-stuffed Juicy Lucy, an early fall mushroom burger with lobster and chanterelle mushrooms, and a handful of collaborations with local cheesemongers Cowbell that feature more highfalutin fromages.
Even with the occasional gussied-up special, the burgers at Lone Star conjure feelings of simpler times and sweaty summer nights in a small town, like how you can imagine it tasted for angsty youth in a Larry McMurtry novel. All of the components are doing their part to ensure the beef is the star.
You can accompany your burger with perfectly crispy and seasoned fries, but it’s the onion rings ($8) that bring the wow factor and surely rank among Portland’s very best. People go wild for RingSide’s “French fried onion rings” (the finest in America, according to James Beard many moons ago) and more than a few folks flock to Tulip Shop for its hula hoop-sized beer-battered beauties. Lone Star’s rings come with a side of personal history and are the result of much tinkering as Muirhead tried capturing the nostalgic magic of a childhood favorite.
“The onion rings took a while to get right,” he says. “There was a tiny drive-up burger place where I grew up in Texas called Aday’s Dairy Mart, and they had the best onion rings I’ve ever had.”
To nail down his ideal recipe, Muirhead uses a double-dredged method that goes from salt water-soaked onion to seasoned flour to buttermilk and then back to the flour. Out of this process comes a ring that is golden and crispy with enough chewiness that it doesn’t shatter apart when you bite in. In fact, Lone Star is so confident of this last fact that it offers a “firm guarantee that you’ll never ever pull the onion out of the breading in the first bite,” according to its social media. Dunking them in Lone Star ring sauce brings just the right amount of poppy zest (do I taste mustard in there?).
In an era when scarcity and TikTok hype drive demand for glorified fast food burgers, Lone Star is an outlier, beckoning you with humble and unfussy downhome goodness. Like a good Willie Nelson tune, it’s accessible, laid back, and timeless to hit all the right notes.
TRY IT: Lone Star Burger Bar, 1625 NE Killingsworth St., 971-888-5687, lonestarburgerpdx.com. Noon–8 pm daily.
