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The Portland Pottery Café is across the street from one of my family’s favorite bagel places. Its proximity to delicious bagels means that we’ve never been there before, because bagels pretty much always win.

Bagels always win except for June 30th, 2019 — amidst a very loud, wet thunderstorm — Forage was out of bagels. Distraught, we turned our drippy hearts across the street.

The Portland Pottery Café is a cozy, sort of informal dining space. Coffee and water is self service, and all the cups are hand made mugs (fitting for a place connected to an actual pottery studio). They also serve pieces of cake as big, or bigger than your head (depending on your age, head-size, and whether or not you are afflicted with mumps).

Their menu offers a smattering of what I would call “Americana” options, including a beet and sweet potato veggie burger!

Seeing the veggie burger, I was obliged to order it.

• Did it resemble meat? NOPE!
• It didn’t contain identifiable veggies, and held together very well. I’ve had a number of veggie burgers that included sweet potato, but never beet. It was delicious, and well balanced
• Server on a ciabatta roll, with a side of salt and vinegar potato chips

I like veggie burgers. Whenever I eat someplace new, if they’ve got a veggie burger on the menu I almost always order it.

Because I enjoy projects, I sometimes take notes on the veggie burgers I’ve eaten. And, in the mostly immortal words of John Siracusa, “nothing is so perfect” — so, why not review these veggie burgers!

But on what criteria!?

The criteria for rating a veggie burger

• That it in no way resemble a meat product
• That it contains discrete chunks of identifiable vegetables, e.g. you can identify a bean as a bean, or a piece of corn as corn
• That the “patty” holds together relatively well
• A worthwhile bun