Donny Burger by Vortex: Phoenix's Best Indica Smells Like a Backyard Grill

Arizona's top ten is mostly California transplants, which makes Vortex the outlier worth rooting for: a Phoenix-based craft grow, Arizona-only, run by master cultivator Sean Roussin — two decades of growing and breeding, a 2019 Farmers Cup win in Southern California, and now a brand whose whole pitch is quality over volume out of one focused facility. Phoenix New Times just handed him Best Cultivator in its Best of Phoenix 2025 issue, and handed his Donny Burger the Best Indica award in the same breath.

The strain itself is Michigan seed-bank royalty. Skunk House Genetics crossed GMO onto Han-Solo Burger, and since Han-Solo Burger is itself GMO by Larry OG, what you're really smoking is a GMO backcross — that garlic-mushroom-onion funk folded onto itself with a splash of Larry OG to round the edges. The name is widely taken as a nod to Donny from The Big Lebowski, and one reviewer put it best: the Donny Burger abides.

Nobody buys this jar for a subtle nose. It reeks — chem, earth, gas, and old OG funk, with reviewers describing grilled hamburger and spicy beef jerky without a hint of embarrassment. Meaty, peppery, hashy notes that make it the single most accurately named strain in recent memory. If your circle leans candy and citrus, this is not their jar. If they know what GMO is supposed to smell like, it's exactly their jar.

The numbers behind Vortex's cut are legitimately heavy. The brand publishes its batch results, and roughly fifteen logged Donny Burger harvests have run between 28.5 and 34.1% THC, with several over 32. The smoke matches the sheet: heavy, narcotic, end-of-the-night weed — caryophyllene-led with limonene and myrcene behind it, built for the last bowl, not the first.

Plenty of Arizona brands grow a Donny Burger — Curaleaf, Find, and Dr. Greenthumb's all have one on shelves — but Vortex's is the cut moving nearly $200K in eighths and collecting hardware while it does it. You'll find it across Trulieve's Arizona footprint, at Ponderosa, Nirvana Cannabis in west Phoenix, and up at Curaleaf Sedona. Alongside stablemates like Hash Burger and its Sedona Sunrise eighths also doing real numbers, it's proof the local bench can hang with the imports.