Metrovino's Brand-New Bar Burgers (+ Bonus Speculation!)

Image courtesy Portland Food

Starting tonight, relative Pearl District newcomer (it opened last spring) Metrovino (or MetroVino: it's eternally inconsistent) will be offering a $5 burger/$5 bubbly combo, at the bar only, from 6-9pm, running every Monday until things change. So it's a burger. High-five. What we're enthusiastic about however, here, is the context. Metrovino, helmed by executive chef Gregory Denton , formerly sous-chef at now-Phoenix-like (?) Lucier (the gilded cage of a stomping ground for Violetta/Rolling 'Etta chef Jeremy Niehuss and brand-new Fenouil pastry chef Kristen D. Murray), got off to a confusing and sort of rough start what with all the assumption that it was more of a wine bar than a restaurant. (Maybe the fact that, as last fall's Roger Porter-written Oregonian review (one of many attentions the paper lavished on the restaurant) points out, the restaurant "features Portland's only Enomatic machine, a gorgeous, temperature-controlled walled case behind the bar counter containing 80-some bottles of wine," has something to do with it?)

Point is - no one's quite known how to classify Metrovino (or MetroVino). Wine bar/small plates joint? Restaurant that happens to have baller vintages? Place that's, hm, needing to expand its offerings? The chef is good -- Denton was named the Oregonian's (see, again) "chef to watch" in 2009--so there shouldn't be a problem of taste. So what's with the sudden deal jazz? Inside scoops--whether cauliflower mac and cheese-like or New England seafood chowder-y--as always, appreciated.
· Restaurant Review: MetroVino [Oregonian]
· 2009 Restaurant Rants + Raves [Oregonian]