Skyline Drive Restaurant

Skyline Restaurant
1313 NW Skyline Road
Portland, Oregon
503-292-6727

A deep-fry diner serving up Americana fare in kitschy style.
Editorial Rating: Recommended

In Short
Skyline's nostalgic '50s-style décor of Formica counters and Naugahyde booths and bustling, no-nonsense service are true to its "burger and shake" drive-in heritage. Families and young couples come for its signature dish, the Skyline, a lean burger towering with lettuce, tomatoes and onions. The fries and onion rings are crisp, but the real draw is the malted milkshakes in hot fudge and mint chip. More fountain specials include the sexy butterscotch sundae.

Drive down 23rd toward where Restoration Hardware is, head up Burnside, then veer right onto Skyline just past the top of the hill. A few minutes of winding curves brings you to NW Cornell and what used to called the Skyline Drive-In. There’s no more car service, and the neighborhood is no longer the sleepy little patch of countryside it was after WW2 when Portland’s teens would cruise out in their flathead Fords for a burger and coke. But the Skyline hasn’t changed all that much.

There’s an espresso hut tacked onto the Cornell Road side to service the stream of commuters that pours by every morning and an ATM inside for those who might think they can charge their burger on a credit card. But the dining room, a warren of roomy booths and a few small tables, still wears the faded glory of an 40 year-old upgrade. Wood paneling, acoustic tile ceiling, and those Jetson-y light fixtures from the days of Sputnik provide a fitting setting for food that might have been transported from the Kennedy era as well.

Just about everybody serves a basic hamburger, but who still toasts and butters the bun? The Skyline’s burgers and other sandwiches (the BLT on white toast pretty much defines this classic) are just like what I’d eaten at roadside cafes, bus station lunch counters, and small town diners when I was younger. I can’t remember the last time I saw cottage cheese and pineapple on a menu, or a fried egg sandwich, or one made with American cheese. I do remember eating them.

This isn’t necessarily food to write home about, but it’s honest. There’s no doubt about what you’re going to get, and the bonus is that it’s well-made, fresh, and pretty damn tasty. The Skyline doesn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t.

At the Skyline, go for the soft-serve milksakes over pie; the crust goes way to far toward tender without a bit of flakey, and the fillings have that strange, gel-like consistency.

James Beard, Portland’s most famous gourmand, called the Skyline burger ‘one of the best’ he’d ever had.