Here’s an interesting thought experiment for you to try: Imagine what it would be like to try and create a new fast food restaurant, from scratch. You have to try and block all of the familiar imagery that comes to mind when you picture a fast food restaurant, which basically consist of the various branding elements of each restaurant that are seared into our brains, beginning in childhood. Try to picture the inside of a fast food restaurant without Ronald McDonald, without the Golden Arches. No red, no yellow. Nothing flame-broiled. No cardboard “King” crowns. No “Have it Your Way.” Get rid of the little pigtailed redheaded girl. Tell that elderly Southern gentleman in the string tie to shove it. What’s left? What makes a fast food place a fast food place, without these familiar thematic elements?

The inside of Elevation Burger in South Portland may be where you end up, if you continue trying to imagine what an all-new, from-scratch fast food restaurant would look like. Tucked inside a mini-mall that, along with a Buffalo Wild Wings, a cut-rate dentist, and a no-name nutritional supplement store, may be one of the most depressing new shopping malls ever, Elevation Burger is spotlessly clean, and filled with kid-friendly, easy-to-bleach surfaces. It’s rather modern in its aesthetic, all exposed ductwork, high ceilings, and blue-glass energy-saving LED pendant lamps. It’s not unattractive, per se, though it does feel very sterile. Seemingly conscious of this, and no doubt in response to much focus-testing, attempts at warmth are introduced. The tables at each booth appear to be made of grass, or some other similarly-sustainable, Earth-friendly material that reflects plenty of warm, amber-hued light. There are high-gloss bamboo wood floors. The graphics and iconography are all just hip enough, carefully calculated to communicate a mixture of down-home comfort with vectorized, sans-serif cool. There’s something very video game-y about it. The overall effect is that of a brand designed by committee, like too many computerized advisers in “The Sims” all giving you advice on what will most satisfy your virtual customers and keep them from waving and yelling gibberish or peeing on the floor in a knock-kneed panic.

Jillian: As for the atmosphere, it was thin. Also, I think, a calculated effort. There’s an air of the teenage automaton here, an uncanny valley of happy worker bees, all visible behind the glass. Do pay attention to the men behind the curtain. They are clean cut and work efficiently. The entire operation runs smoothly. Which makes me a little nervous, frankly.

If there’s an overall message coming from Elevation Burger, it’s an emblazoned assertion rather unlikely for a fast food company: Ingredients matter. Elevation Burger wants to make perfectly sure you understand that their burgers and fries are made from the kinds of high-quality ingredients you just won’t find at most hamburger joints. The organic beef used in their burgers is 100% free-range, grass fed, antibiotic and pesticide free, is ground in-house, and is as good for the environment as it is good for you, and is totally, totally unlikely to give you Mad Cow Disease. It’s a buzzword-heavy angle that strikes me as kind of peculiar, and is another reflection of the chain’s feel-good Virginian roots. It’s enough to make me want to put on a fleece pullover and start growing medicinal marijuana.

In a marketplace getting crowded with new, so-called “fresh-fast” restaurants, and in a city where Five Guys recently established a successful outpost, the key question is not one of corporate politics or philosophy: It’s a question of flavor. So just what does an Elevation Burger taste like?

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