Fried Foods Galore

This is going to be somewhat of a stolen entry as I'm recounting things I saw on the Food Network's "Unwrapped". This particular episode was on fried foods. They mentioned some interesting things, and then I did some research of my own. I'm only including a few things which I found particularly noteworthy from the show.

SmashBurger

Smashburger is a burger joint started in 2007 in some mysterious location. They've expanded from their starting location to a number of cities. Recently one popped up a the uber- expensive mall near my house and I was intrigued by its bright colors and affordable menu. This is particularly of note because I cannot afford anything in that mall besides the books at Barnes and Nobles ( the only reason I ever go there). There's also a Cheesecake Factory there, but I digress.

Smashburger was featured on Unwrapped because they have an interesting collection of fried sides. Most interesting, I think, is fried pickles. Now, I've heard of fried pickles before and they admit they got the concept from out west, but these look more tasty. They're fried slices of dill pickle with a ranch dipping sauce. The cool thing about Smashburger is that their menu has little tweaks for each different state, so in Colorado you can have fried chili peppers and elsewhere you can get fried banana peppers. All locations include sweet potato fries, haystack onions and veggie frites, which are fried veggies sans batter. Each location also has burgers specifically designed by state. For example, The New Jersey burger has bacon, blue cheese,grilled onions, haystack onions, lettuce tomato and mayo. There's also a taylor ham burger and so forth.

Whiffie Pies

Another curious morsel was the fried pie, found on a street cart in Portland, Oregon. The pies are all made daily and have some really odd flavors like salmon with chipotle sauce. There are 3 savory pies and 3 sweet pies a day. I also don't really understand when the brother/sister duo that runs the cart sleeps since they prepare the pies during the day and fry and sell at night. I'm not a pie fanatic or anything, but the concept of freshly made pies that are deep fried is certainly intriguing. More intriguing is the fact that Portland has an enormous mass of street carts, which adds to the reasons that I think it would be awesome to visit.

I looked up Whiffie Pies to see what I could find and I encountered some other fantastic street food in Portland. The one that caught my eye right away was this:
Hey it's Grilled Cheesus' Return! It's just a cart that serves grilled cheese. OK, well special grilled cheese and then some pretty basic ones. They have a crusts cut off sandwich, Brie with tomatoes and peppers, and The Elvis ( PB and Banana. You can add bacon).

But more impressively or disgustingly we have the Cheesus Burger:

The Soon-to-be-Famous Burger Behemoth. We’ve done away with the bun and replaced it with two grilled cheese sandwiches. That’s right, two of them.
One on top, one on the bottom. Pickles and American cheese inside one, Grilled
Onion and Colby Jack in the other. Lettuce, Tomato, Ketchup, Mustard, and
1/3lb Burger in between. You won’t need to eat again for 2 days.
Comes with a bag of chips and a case of napkins. $8.00

Eww? I was surprised to discover that this is not unique to this cart. I found another cart called the Brunch Box which also serves a burger between grilled cheese sandwiches. Their menu comes with a picture!

Their menu also includes other horrors such as this: $9 - redonkadonk
"omg! burger" (Egg, ham, spam, bacon, American cheese) between two texas-toast grilled cheese sandwich "buns"

and my personal favorite: $2 - cheezasaurus rex : Dinosaur-shaped grilled cheese sandwich.
Who can resist anything that's dinosaur shaped? I used to have dino chicken nuggets and they were the best!


Portland also offers a bicycle delivery service that picks up your favorite local foods and carries them via bike to you. Sweet! So since I've already heard how awesome Portland is, this only adds to its reputation of awesomeness. This trip will happen some time. I just don't know when.