It’s a tough gig running a food blog. First you do it for the love and for yourself. But soon people find out about it and you become popular. You ride the high for awhile–enjoying all the fancy cars, drugs, and loose women that are thrown at you when people learn you’re a food-jockey. You live for the now. But soon you start feeling the price of fame. You don’t know whether your friends really like you for you, or just for your food blog. Life becomes empty, soulless. You become a shell of a man.

It’s at that point that you turn to the food itself. Your only comfort. Dame Vittles always welcomes you to her warm caloric bosom–she’ll never leave you. It’s always party-time on the F-train.

Soon you look around and all you no longer have friends–only enablers.

Lost in my whirlwind of foodblogdom I found myself traveling 2594 miles west to get my fix. Her name was Los Angeles, and I knew she’d been waiting for me. But I couldn’t face her alone. LA’s the kind of dame that will leave you feeling like the last unwanted piece of gefilte fish–all ground-up and floating alone in a mysterious jelly. My guide and enabler was Jennifer. You may remember her from my three part yarn on the big neuroscience conference in Atlanta. Jen took me right into the jaws of the beast and back and I lived to tell the tale…

Now you might recall my description of a creature known as the West-Coast-Mexican-Food-Snob. On this journey I took it upon myself to understand a monster of a slightly different nature: The West-Coast-Burger-Guru (WCBG). The WCBG is much less of an aggressive animal than his burrito-loving cousin. No rants, no snobbery. He’s most likely to just look at you sideways when you order from McDonald’s, and say “Dude, you GOTTA try an In-N-Out!”

So, project #1 in LA was to check out some of the burger joints of note and see how they matched up.

Being the good scientist I am, I had to start with the control, which was the ever-popular Whopper that I enjoyed in the lovely Logan airport terminal. To me, Whopper and its feuding rival, the Big Mac, are essentially the Ikea of burgers. They are cleanly presented, well ordered, solid, and very very clearly mass produced without a singled bit of love put into their creation.

I arrived in LA and very soon Jen and I settled into the daily schedule of:

10:00am: Wake up
11:30am: Eat a burger
12:00am: Drive around LA
3:00pm: Grab a snack
5:00pm: Lounge around the house
7:00pm: Go somewhere and eat till exploding

So the first burger we had was on Venice Beach at the Sidewalk Cafe. I had a mushroom and avocado burger, which is a pure California burger styling. Well most things with avocado seem Californian, except for that one time I got an avocado milkshake at the Westway Diner in Hell’s Kitchen–that was just…strange, yet better than you’d think. Anyhow, this was a pretty good burger. Nothing to write home about, but overall it was solid.

The Sidewalk cafe touts itself as the “best place to people watch in Los Angeles” and as far as I can tell, it lives up to its claims. Never before had I eaten a burger in the presence of so many purveyors of “water filtration devices” (and practitioners thereof) and people with dreadlocked rasta dogs. I must pause for a second to say that I hate little fifi yipping dogs (dogs are animals not accessories) and that the Venice rasta dog was a whole new way of which I was unaware of making them even more annoying. These bechatchked pooches were covered in so many bangles, ribbons, pot symbols, and hippie/reggae kitsch that they could barely move their unwashed dreadlocked carcasses down the street.The next day, we went to the mama of all LA burger joints: In-N-Out Burger. Now In-N-Out is famous for its ordering as much as its actual burger. There are a whole bunch of secret ways to order your burger that do not appear on the menu.Some of the notable ones are:

• X by Y: X meat patties and Y slices of cheese (for example, a 3 by 3 or a 2 by 4)
• Animal Style: the meat is cooked and fried with mustard and then pickles are added, extra spread and grilled onions are added.
• Protein Style: for all you low-carbohydrate dieters, this is a burger with no bun (wrapped in lettuce).
• Fries “Well-Done”: extra crispy fries . . . even better than the regular!
• Fries “Light”: opposite of fries well-done, more raw than most people like ‘em

Get the full list here.

I ordered and got the gold standard, which was a double-double “animal style.” The flavoring on this was just great. You could tell all the topping ingredients had been lying together on the griddle for a long long time and infused each other with each other in a Caligulaesque topping orgy. The burger patty itself was OK, but you really didn’t care because the toppings were so good.



Next Jen took me to a place called The Apple Pan. Now this place had character. You walk in to see a horseshoe shaped counter with old style bar stools surrounding a busy grill fortress with with a giant hood and guys in old style aprons and hats darting like hummingbirds from patron to patron.This is a place designed for turnover. People over behind those who look like they’re finishing up, ready to pounce and take their spots. Most of the time there’s a huge line out the door. The servers act accordingly, working with lightning speed with no time to answer more than a yes or no question.One of the main things they do to get you out as fast as possible is they PRE-POUR your ketchup. This seemed silly to me, until I realized how quickly we ate all of our fries. In the burger world, fries are the meal extender. You just casually pour and dip, and repour and redip. But with the giant mass of prepoured ketchup, we were just downing the fries like popcorn. They also have these nifty paper cups and holders for your drink so that they don’t have to waste time washing and clearing glasses.



Apple Pan offers two main burgers, the steak burger, and the hickory burger, which is essentially a steak burger with bbq sauce. Jen and I both ordered steak burgers with cheese, which came out in a matter of minutes. The burgers were really good, save the super strong sweet pickle relish that comes in the sauce. It was so overpowering that it was really hard to taste the actual burger. Maybe if I ordered it without the relish, I would have enjoyed even it more. Regardless, the atmosphere there was so cool I had a great time.Finally for burger #4 (#5 if you count the airport), we went to Fatburger. At this point, having four burgers for breakfast, four days in a row was getting to be a little much. But I forged ahead anyways. Inside Fatburger they had a bunch of amusing signs, one of which you see here:



The thing that Fatburger offers is the add-on system where you can add egg, chili, bacon, and cheese in any combination you want. Because this was a breakfast burger, I ordered a 1/2 lb Kingburger (same as a Fatburger but bigger) with egg with a tall glass of lemonade.



As far as burger patties go, this was the best. It has a nice charred taste to it that made it through all the toppings and gave a good flame-broiled taste to it. Jen noted that the burgers were just heated on a griddle, so the taste was probably a liquid smoke additive–but I enjoyed it nonetheless.3/4 the way through the burger, the constant burger breakfasts caught up with me a I gave up. I was done with burgers, I couldn’t look at burgers, I couldn’t think about burgers. So I gave up on my Kingburger, because a 1/4 lb would have been enough.And now, I return to my theme of showing videos of friends who have eaten too much in my company with this lovely video of poor poor Jen after we came back to her apartment and I jokingly asked her if she wanted another burger. She responds, “Say no to burgers” through her tears which fall like rain….

So there you have it. My LA burger fest. So how do they all add up? After great consideration, I give each of the places I visit on my trip their own award.

• BK, McDonalds: Most Reliable
• Sidewalk Cafe: Best place to freak-watch
• In-N-Out: Best overall concept and flavor
• The Applepan: Most character
• Fatburger: Best tasting burger patty

Now what do I think the best burger out there is overall? It may surprise you, but thus far, the Tons of Fun burger at The Cheesecake Factory wins hands down.

No Comments Yet Best of The Food Monkey, Food/Recipes, Junkfood, Meat, Places, Restaurants, Thought