Portland’s Best Vegan Burger Shop Has Served Its Last Meal
Image: Alex Frane
Portland has no shortage of fantastic vegan and vegan-friendly restaurants, including spots where you can find an excellent veggie burger. But few plant-based spots have ever managed to nail the greasy, cheesy, sodium-packed satisfaction of a fast-food burger like Chris Hudson’s Gnarly’s did. Hudson opened his burger shop as a food cart in 2021, before moving it into the short-lived Ecliptic Brewing annex Moon Room, now home to Bauman’s on Oak. At the end of 2023, Gnarly’s moved again, setting up shop at the music venue and cocktail bar Swan Dive, located at the eastern side of the Morrison Bridge. There it served items like its signature Dang Burger, resembling a vegan take on a Whopper. The burger was a hit with writer and fast-food maven Bill Oakley, who called it one of the best in town, vegan or otherwise, and we had to agree.
Gnarly’s briefly expanded to a second bar, joining SE Hawthorne’s Afterlife shortly after opening. That partnership quietly ended earlier this year. Then on September 5, Hudson took to Instagram to announce that Gnarly’s would be serving its last burger and sidewinder fries on September 21. He offered no reason for the closure but promised it was “far from the end—just a shift toward what’s next.”
Other Closures to Know
Hit the Spot Burger
closed sept 8
Gnarly’s wasn’t the only popular burger restaurant to close in September: Cult favorite Hit the Spot called it quits on September 8. Also starting out as a food cart, Hit the Spot helped usher in the smashburger craze when it opened in 2018. In 2022, the team made the ambitious move into brick-and-mortar, taking over the space formerly home to Brunch Box on SE Morrison. In a closing statement on Instagram, the owners wrote, “We lost our entire savings and our home in this space,” but that they hope to come back in some form or another.
Assembly Brewing Annex
Closed early sept
Assembly Brewing received plenty of buzz when it landed in the Foster-Powell neighborhood in 2019. Cofounder George Johnson opened Assembly as the first Black-owned brewery in Portland. Johnson began as a home brewery before going professional and studied pizzamaking under the Detroit pizza icon Shawn Randazzo, now passed. The flagship brewery closed last May, but the pizzeria annex on NE Alberta, opened in February 2024, hung on until September.
