Haute-N-Ready: Burgerville's Egg Nog Milkshake

An egg nogshake, if you will.

Welcome to Haute-N-Ready, in which John Locanthi, Willamette Week's trencherman of leisure, tastes the hastily made, modestly priced food of the common man.

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'Tis the season when families and friend gather 'round to give each other gifts. Some give each other scarves or neckties. Others video games. In commercials, people give each other cars with large ceremonial bows on top. Egg nog is the gift the grocery store gives to you. Its season is brief—if you're anything like me, it lasts until you bring that first gallon home and feverishly chug it—but sweet. It lasts from Thanksgiving to the end of the Christmas season because we can only be trusted with access to it for a month at most. It comes in the same packaging as milk, yet so much better. In order to prove that last assertion, Portland area's own Burgerville has replaced the titular milk in milkshake with egg nog.

Before we go any further, what exactly is egg nog? It's a mostly milk-based beverage with cream, sugar and whipped eggs with a little nutmeg to taste. But there are variations. I grew up with the store-bought kind. I'm sure many Willamette Week readers make their own. I once accidentally tasted some homemade nog at a Christmas party, and it seems that some people do enjoy putting adult beverages in it (which explains why the Founding Fathers made sure it rhymed with "grog"). Regardless, it is uniformly sweet, creamy, thick and frothy.

Replacing the relatively flavorless milk in a milkshake with egg nog seemed a grand idea, so I ventured forth to the historic 1969 Burgerville in my hometown of Beaverton to try it. A small will run you $3.65. (The seasonal golden yukon waffle fries are a solid, if not Walla Walla onion rings-amazing seasonal side from this chain.)

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Milk has always taken a backseat in the milkshake. It exists to lower the viscosity of the ice cream to increase drinkability. The flavor comes mostly from the ice cream itself. Unlike milk, egg nog has a strong flavor. Burgerville opted to go with a standard vanilla ice cream for this shake. The result is that the egg nog milkshake looks and tastes almost entirely like egg nog, right down to the little dark specks of nutmeg floating amid the pale yellowish, beige-y creamy drink.

Egg nog is delicious and all, but this reverse shake has a flaw: the ice cream makes it thicker. This holiday drink has many admirable qualities, but it is already thick enough. Blended with ice cream, it become more difficult to drink through a straw than Burgerville's already thick regular milkshakes. That first drag was like sucking the chrome off a trailer hitch, to use the parlance of our lamentably crude times. Since this egg nog milkshake tastes mostly like nog, I think I would have prefer it served in its natural state.

The real question now that milk's reign of terror as the milkshake liquid has come to an end is what ice creams would pair well with egg nog? Chocolate? Pumpkin pie? Is Rum an ice cream flavor? Can Burgerville get a full liquor license and put rum in the egg nog milkshake? Only time will tell, my friends.

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