After having an excellent experience at the Jojo food truck earlier this year, we made visiting the restaurant a priority on this most recent trip to Portland. This was a nice temperate Saturday evening and all tables outside were taken. Luckily there was no line.
Cheddar Loaded Jojos ($13.50) - I did not expect this to be a tower of jojos. Let's start with the good - the tower is very well constructed. They melt cheddar between every single jojo, allowing the wedges to all cement together into a very structurally stable tower. The problems are multifold. Firstly, using cheese as cement necessitates serving the dish at room temperature, or at least not nearly as hot as fresh fried potatoes. Secondly, since the jojos all come cramped together, they start steaming, resulting in jojos that no longer have the crackly, crispy crust that made me fall in love with the ones served at the food truck. I feel like this dish was invented purely for instagram, to the detriment of the potatoes. Although, I'm not certain that the restaurant even uses the same recipe - even the edges not covered in cheese seem to lack the crackly, starchy surface that the food truck jojos have. Instead of being kind of clumpy, the batter is thin here, and while having a pleasing look due to the reddish spices that the potatoes are tossed in, the seasoning salt taste is not really prominent. I was so looking forward to the jojos only to be horribly disappointed. (2/5)
The dish comes with two dipping sauces of which we went with the shallot vinaigrette and the spicy mayo. The former is a sweet, thick and lumpy vinaigrette. The latter is a creamy sauce that has a tangy spicy base.
Mr. Onion Cheeseburger ($13) - Don't be an idiot like me and assume Jojo only serves fried chicken sandwiches. I ordered the chicken, but the cashier put in the burger. After asking me to double check the order, I approved it after just reading the "Mr. Onion" part. Oh well, stupid error on my part. I do love a good smashburger, so I wasn't wholly disappointed in the first place. In this case, the burger comes with two smash patties, both cooked on the flat top, resulting in even browning along the faces. They aren't cooked long enough to develop any lacy charring, and instead remain moist and meaty, not drying out at all. On top, they melt a slice of cheese and sprinkle on on chives, then they add a bunch of caramelized onion, brown in color, properly caramelized until sweet. Underneath the burger is a bed of raw onion that seems to be soaked to remove all the raw onion spicy bite, but leaves the onion flavor. Some pickles are added below for some acidity. There's finally a bit of Alabama white BBQ sauce added, very mustardy and creamy. It's all on a bun that compresses until it's almost as flat as a pita - essentially just there as a vessel to hold all the ingredients instead of being an integral part of the sandwich. This makes it so the burger doesn't have too much height to it, allowing it to fit easily in the mouth without stretching the jaw out. The sandwich is tasty, but I do wish it had a more substantial bun and more charring on the patties. (4/5)
We visited the next day for brunch to see if there was a one time issue with the jojos:
Jojos ($6.50) - Could the previous day have been an aberration? The answer: yes. These are the same as I remembered: supremely fresh crackly and crispy exterior paired with a tender interior. There are multiple types of crispness in the same package. The skin side of the potato has a more delicate crisp while the vertex has a harder crunch. The dish comes with one dipping sauce. We picked the Sweet Chili, which is a generic Thai sweet chili sauce that doesn't really go well with jojos. Oh well. (5/5)
Chicken Biscuit ($13) - Huge biscuit with a cleavage line through the center, easily 1.5x or 2x the size of normal biscuits. It's baked until a crunchy crust forms, but the inside remains very fluffy, moist, and tender. It tastes like scallion mixed with an alkaline base. The chicken is seasoned very well and is fried until the breading is nice and crispy. I do think it's over fried since the chicken is stringy in texture. They drizzle a bit of honey over everything so it's sweet and salty. (4/5)
Jojo Breakfast Sandwich ($14) - There's a lot going on here, with gooey overflowing eggs, salty bacon, a bunch of cheese, sweet caramelized onions, and even some nice crispy jojos inserted inside. It's tangy, creamy, slightly spicy, salty, savory, rich, all in one sandwich. That's not even mentioning the toasted, yet fluffy shokupan as the bun. It's so decadent that it's actually very difficult to eat due to the wetter ingredients dripping out while eating. (5/5)
I don't know what happened with that tower of jojos. Their normal ones are great and I would revisit for more. In fact I'm just going to remove it from my score so Jojo can remain a 5.
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