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A few years into the streetscape “diet” that winnowed Foster Road’s four lanes to two, the venerable thoroughfare continues to resist the massive renovations that soon rendered other boulevards in Southeast unrecognizable. Sure, the taxidermy studio and Sunday school supply store have thus far stood their ground, but nightlife developments now veer more Slingshot Lounge than Gun Room.
Restaurantwise, meanwhile, the residential base’s awkward mélange of elderly retirees, aging rockers, Russian émigrés, and slumming techies has attracted a wildly eclectic bounty of chancers sharing little beyond an unfussy acceptance of certain commercial practicalities paired with an unalloyed impulse toward excess. No recent launch feels more emblematic of the most intriguing Foster food proto-franchises than Sammy’s Burgers and Shakes.
The Sammy’s empire reportedly came to life four years ago along the upper reaches of Northeast Halsey Street when a longtime employee of various fast food chains submitted his burger truck for a hotly competitive spot inside Fairview’s soon-to-open Food Plaza. Eagerly awaited by East Portlanders perennially underserved by local startups, Fairview Food Plaza’s arrival made national news—not just for food, but the unveiling of a dedicated public art project attached to the development: a 40-foot aluminum fork claimed to be the world’s tallest. A goofily crass totem of excess prizing giganticism for giganticism’s sake, the grand fork found a kindred spirit in Sammy’s signature smashburgers. An ever-growing fan base has hailed gooey monstrosities like the Mac-Burger (two mammoth patties on a bed of cartmade-daily macaroni and cheese ($15 with combo) that only made their way south as ungainly daily specials, which end up more like weekly specials that seem to always sell out too soon.
To a degree, all the area’s incoming transplants and startups feel somewhat driven by slightly personalized takes on universal comfort food. As a means of garnering attention within that realm, though its temp leviathan burgers (not unreasonably) raised the most eyebrows online, Sammy’s actual hold on customer affections has less to do with the size of the meals than the breadth of the menu. Recent special combos have included a chicken-fried patty drenched in gravy ($15 for combo), Friday the 13th jerk chicken burger bleeding hot sauce ($15), and butterific lobster bisque in bread bowls for Valentine’s Day ($25).
Fun as the beefy blunderbusses may be as memes, the so-to-speak meat of Sammy’s oeuvre lies in menu staples. On a recent visit, we tried Sammy’s jalapeño double burger and the mushroom single ($8 for single patties solo, $10 for a small single-patty combo, $15 for a double-patty large combo)—both quality smashburgers, properly crisped with still-juicy centers, that felt weirdly subdued given expectations. That’s hardly a criticism. The restraint smartly forced focus on the quality of meat and freshness of toppings (believably) advertised as locally grown. Given their prices, the results were certain to be recommended, if not so much remembered.
Not unlike Humdinger Drive-In—another slapdash local burger joint whose similarly wide-ranging menu was blessed by sheer scope (and posthumously romanticized beyond all sense when it closed in 2015)—the unending list of Sammy’s flavors seems beyond measure, all but guaranteeing lifelong devotees so thrilled to find a regular source of their singular tastes that they hardly notice that the milkshakes ($5 all flavors) arrive a bit oversweetened and thinned down.
Patently decadent gut bombs appeal to kids of all ages. Real children will eat or drink just about anything sufficiently sweet, but only crave what makes them feel special. Sammy’s litany of rarefied blends seem tailored to forge nascent fiends with bespoke flavors like Mermaid (blue raspberry, caramel apple, Froot Loops) or Unicorn, which seemingly no one had ever ordered from the Sammy’s specialist on duty during our visit, who did not have a master recipe list to pull from. For all we know, she made the recipe up on the spot and could be just as flexible for a demanding child.
There’s a pleasant sloppiness to the menu that dovetails not so neatly with decorative motifs. Sammy’s spikes the monochromatic dalmation-clone design of mini-mall malt shops through sumptuous flourishes of nostalgia porn (diners could eat on lovingly airbushed photos of Ramblin’ Rod and Tom Peterson) and back-counter shelves laden with mismatched objets d’horror: a Frankenstein poster, a thoracic cage prop, a terrifying WorriCrow. Some prospective customers still beholden to the space’s former incarnation as Diane’s—the diner is immortalized printed on a full-size tabletop—seemed especially aggrieved by how thoroughly the new owners wiped away all traces of well-worn domesticity to, in the words of one local disgusted homeowner, replicate a “stoner basement aesthetic.” While he’d never again bring the family to sit down for a meal, the homeowner told WW he regularly stops by to fulfill his kids’ cravings.)
In truth, Sammy’s most dynamic visual components were surely the self-referential shout-outs of overly aggro brand boosterism—“Sweet Creamy Cock Meat Sammich” emblazoned in scarlet cursive, say—or graphic additions to the already fit-to-bursting menu whose sheer volume proved maddening. In other words, if the guiding vision of nearby SuperDeluxe pointedly echoes McDonald’s dully efficient triumphalism, Sammy’s seems styled closer to a homegrown Jack in the Box. And somewhat miraculously for a burg famously starved for late-night dining options, it shares the same hours.
Past 3 am on a Saturday morning so blisteringly cold that even the adjoining eterna-packed karaoke dive The Trap held just a few stragglers by last call, small sets of adolescents dressed to the nines began settling at the counter and small tables nearby. It’s hard to imagine that any of them intended Sammy’s as their ultimate destination for the wee hours, but given that the competing after-party options were probably actual stoner basements, they seemed content to order favorite shakes and sides and side-eye new off-menu attractions.
Providing a menu expansive enough to encompass every craving might not be the noblest of ambitions, but just as satisfying all of the people some of the time holds an evident draw, there’s worth to hosting a reliably safe space sufficiently generic that customers can make of it what they will. Beating chain diners and fast food kiosks may sound like a pretty low bar, but if every franchise-to-be did nothing more than highlight locally sourced crowd-pleasers a little cheaper and a little better than they had to be, we’d have a far tastier world.
EAT: Sammy’s Burgers and Shakes, 5052 SE Foster Road, instagram.com/sammysburgersnshakes. Open 24/7.
