LOU O' BEDLAM

(Me, by Leiana Miller, 7.17.09)

Burger Day: Comme Ça

I’ve been meaning to try this place pretty much since the beginning of my Burger Day adventure. It’s been spoken of many a time as the best burger in the city, I’ve seen the head chef interviewed, about burgers, by the New York Times, the place is a big deal.

So finally, for lunch with my oldest friend (our mothers have known each other since grade school, so technically we have been friends longer than we’ve even been alive), we hit the place.

HIT IT HARD. I skipped breakfast for this, man.  Barely even sipped any water.

So we get there, the place is wicked fancy, this ain’t no “burger joint”. This is a restaurant, though I couldn’t actually tell you what kind of cuisine they serve, I just hunted down the burger on the menu and left it at that.

My friend, she had the steak tartar, so they serve that.  It was fancy.  Yes.

The burger, it was also fancy.  Apparently the current trend is to make burgers that are so patty big you can barely fit them into your mouth.

This is silly.  Do they think me some dilettante, that I would be scared away by a burger’s sheer size?

Ha.  Ha, I say.  “How do you eat that thing?” My friend asked.

“With my mouth.”

AW YEAH.

They put on a wee bit too many onions.  It’s 2 hours later, I can still taste ‘em.  But once I scraped a few off, we had ourselves a fine burger.  Excellent meat, cooked exactly as I’d ordered.

It’s a simple burger, cheese, onions, a light mayo-type dressing, letttuce.  I respect that.  They didn’t try to dazzle me with arcane ingredients, or trick me by using an overpowering cheese.  Just a straight classy burger.

And it was quite good.  Hit the spot, definitely no room left in the stomach.

Best burger in LA? Nah.  It’s solid, no doubt.  But there was nothing special in the taste, nothing that stood out.  Just a damned good burger. Which is a mean feat, these days.

Grade: A-

Burger Day: Unami Burger (Take 2)

It’s been a bit since the last Burger Day post. I make no apologizes, there are periods I just don’t want a burger.

Such a period has just ended!

Ned (see above) wanted to go, he’d never been, and had heard a lot about the place.

Reminded me of a younger me. Younger by about 2 months.

So we went, and this time I avoided the burgers they suggest for n00bs.  I went with the Truffle burger, which has truffle glaze, truffle-juiced cheese, and beef, cooked in truffle oil.

That’s it.

Strong, man, that was a strong burger.  Much better than their signature Unami burger.  It was truffle & meat, and my mouth.  That is a pefect combination.

So, I will be revising my grade of Unami Burger.  The sassy waiter who mocked Ned for his “cool 80s” look, the simplicity of their truffle burger, the fact that they offered two Different root beers? Good stuff.

Grade: A-

Burger Day: Elisabeth noms down on some blueberry pancakes at The Broadway Grill, because apparently pancakes are different in Norway.

The plan had been to have lunch on the 3rd Street Promenade, then have dinner at Father’s Office, a burger place that is attaining near-mythical status in my continuing search for LA’s best burger.

I didn’t mean to order a burger on 3rd st., but I just love ‘em so much!  So when the ladies from Norway, who’d been in LA for three months and whose visas were due to run out in four days, wanted to hit the beach then grab some lunch, I was left with little choice but to make the 2 burger day move.

I wasn’t expecting much from the Broadway Bar & Grill’s burger, figured it was just gonna be a standard “we have to put burgers on the menu, we’ll try not to poison you” burger.

But I was damned surprised.  Thick, juicy, the meat doing the heavy-lifting, flavor-wise.  Fine burger.

They also had a caramel milkshake, which was fucking delicious.

Grade (for being surprisingly good): B+

Oh, and of course the evening plan went all FUBAR, so no Father’s Office.  But I will eat there. THIS, I COMMAND.

BURGER DAY: Natasha in the park, because I forgot to take a shot @ The Apple Pan

Two burgers in two days!!! I’ll find LA’s best burger IF IT KILLS ME.

Which current studies show is incredibly probable.

In any event, today I took Natasha, after a lovely shoot in the park (lady climbed a tree for me, what a woman!), to The Apple Pan, a L.A. landmark. Place has been standing since the late 40s, and the menus is exactly the same as it was the day it opened.

As, by the look of the place, is everything else.  The service is rapid fire and no-nonsense, “what you want? cheese? fries? coke?” That was it, man, that’s all the guy said to us, and it took him about one picosecond to spit it all out.  Guy, at least in his 60s, moved like his pants were on fire.

But you don’t care about the service! “how was the burger?” you ask.  “How was the burger so many rave about, for so long???”

Meh.  Their burger relies on a tomato-y relish they spread liberally on the patty.  The meat itself is fair, automatically cooked medium rare, with a brick of lettuce and some pickles.

Pickles AND relish.  Too much.  And that special relish of theirs, while interesting, not all that good. Too sweet.

I get that the place has ambiance up the ass, and it’s just all them old guys behind the counter are just so cute in their curt manner and staccato spanish (which Natasha totally used to her advantage, smoothly using her Castilian to get a straw.  little thing, yes, but i tell ya, would’ve taken an hour if she hadn’t gone native).  But the food just ain’t nothin’ to write home about.

If I ever wrote home. Which I don’t.  Because I am home.  I’d be writing to myself, and that’s just silly.

Grade: C

BURGER DAY: Nick chows down on Houston’s American Burger.

It was a bit of a trial finding a burger last night.  The plan was simple: pick up Nick (recent transplant from London), head over to The Apple Pan, an LA burger landmark.

Only, come to find after a 20 minute drive, The Apple Pan is closed on Mondays, a fact brought into stark relief by the homeless guy sleeping in the doorway when we arrived.

No problem. We’ll go to Plan B: Father’s Office, a place more than several people have recommended to me once discovering my quest to find the best LA burger.

Only, Father’s Office is both tiny & crowded, and has what the maitre ‘d calls an “open” seating system.  Which basically means everyone stands around and hopes they’re close to a table when it opens up.  Otherwise, it’s…heh, it’s bedlam.  No rhyme or reason, just stand around, and if you’ve been waiting 40 minutes, and some guy just walks in and happens to walk in right as someone’s leaving, and he’s closer, he gets the table.  Or you have to fight over it.  Fuck that.

So it was back in the car for us.

Fortunately we are both grade A nerds, so all it meant was more talk about who the great directors of the day are, and if it’s really possible to get tired of talking about Batman.  And how dating is a marathon, not a sprint.

So, on to Houston’s.

Only Houston’s is now a salsa club.

Wherein we began laughing hysterically, because this 80 minutes of driving has driven us INSANE.

We ended up at the other Houston’s, over in Century City.

WHERE WE SEE BILL DUKE.  Love me some Bill Duke.

Oh, but anyway, burger.  The Houston’s burger is quite good. They put some canadian bacon on there, only it was really just a few slices of ham, but that was still quite good.  The burger was cooked just the way I liked, and the (they mention this on their menu) freshly ground chuck was indeed tasty.  Shoestring fries to go along with it.

I left on the shredded lettuce (which works much better than leaves of lettuce, I say), took off the chopped onions and the tomatoes.

But.  Burger was $15.  Too expensive for what, in the end was only a solid burger.  It didn’t excel, yet cost more than The Counter, where you get to custom design your burger with a variety of increasingly exotic toppings.

Service was excellent, though, as is my lot in life, we got the most homely waitress there.

What, I was both shallow and ravenous.

Grade: B

BURGER DAY: Frances, while ordering at The Counter

Yesterday, after shooting over at my favorite Topanga Canyon park, Frances and I hit up The Counter, a restaurant recommended to me by at least six people.

I was envisioning some old-timey diner, or a hole-in-the-wall outfit, something creaky and cramped, with questionable service and sloppy food.

What I got was a tre chic production, all steel furniture, young staff, lots of windows (mm, natural light), and a “custom burger” menu.

Now, I was ambilvalent about this.  It all looked well & good, lots of delicious choices.  But I’d been burned by the “gourmet burger” idea before*, and was wondering if all this fanciness would backfire.

Frances was overwhelmed by choices.

I ended up with ordering a burger with grilled onions, russian dressing, tillamok cheddar and canadian bacon.  No, no lettuce, just takes up room.  No, no vegetables, what am I, a commie?

Frances ordered a burger with a garlic alioli dressing, avocado, sprouts, lettuce mix and…I think that’s it.  I was too busy devouring my burger (and banana shake AND sweet potato fries) to really focus on her food.

BECAUSE IT WAS DELICIOUS.  I’ve only tested a few LA burgers so far, but this one’s tops.  The meat was excellently cooked, and they used a solid angus beef, nothing too tricky.  The bun was just solid enough to endure the grease that would have sogged up a lesser bun. You get to choose, beyond your various accoutrements, the size of your burger and what kind of bun you like.

But they don’t get carried away, service was stellar, there’s real banana in the shake, the fries are on point (heh, my dad talks like that “aw son, that was on point” and “that was on the one, son” don’t know what he’s saying half the time, but his occasional ghetto patois is delightful), just an all-around awesome time.

Frances’ burger was so good she actually had to take a small break.  Lady looked as though the damn burger had just given her the best kiss of her life.

You know that look.  Yeah, that.

Grade: A

BURGER DAY: Laura, holding a fake burger that probably tasted better than the ones we had at GOOD.

Sunday night Laura and I went in search of a burger.  It was time for my Burger Day review, and she had a hankering for one, as well.

Naturally, we couldn’t think of a place in Silverlake with a good burger.

So we settled for the microbrew & grill known as GOOD.

Which is wasn’t.  Not even kinda good.

Service was slow and poor.

The food was tasteless and undercooked.  The fries were undercooked.  The fries.

The burger was bland, and I made a poor choice ordering their “Exorcism Burger”, which basically just had an enormous piece of cheddar fried around the burger itself.

This serves no purpose.  It tastes like grease.  It is grease.  Yellow grease.

Laura was kind enough to pay, and I advised her to leave no tip, but she is not as cold-hearted (I call it JUSTICE!!) as I am, so she left enought to satisfy her guilt.

Fuck that place, and the waiter Laura so aptly called “a member of a christian screamo band”.

Grade: F

BURGER DAY: Laura, in the Cafe 101 parking lot

I had originally planned to review a burger a week here on the blog.

But I love burgers.  Occasionally eat them more than once a week.

And so.

Friday, Laura & I went to Cafe 101.  She was famished, and I live right up the street.

Sure, I had dinner plans for a few hours later, but me = glutton, so fuck it.

We both had the burger, caught up as we hadn’t seen each other in a week.  Which, for a photographer & his muse, is a lot.

But this ain’t about us, it’s about the burger!

Meh.

Not bad, no sir.  But…well, let’s use Past Lou.  Past Lou was thinking, “boy, really nothing to say about this burger. Not bad, but not particularly memorable.  What the hell am I gonna write about this so-so burger? The shake’s good, but this ain’t about the shake!  Hm.  This chipotle mayo is tasty, but I didn’t actually use it on the burger.  Maybe I should’ve, but it’s so good with the fries.  Maybe I should talk about the fries, some of ‘em are sweet potatoe fries, and those are delicious.  The burger should be more like them sweet potatoe fries!!!”

So, the burger’s okay, but it’s no sweet potatoe fries.

Grade: C+

BURGER DAY: Ned, after In n’ Out Burger

Two things:

1. This is Ned.  Ned is the first victim volunteer in my new series (which isn’t really a series, but isn’t it more interesting if I call it that?) of portraits of folks I wouldn’t normally photograph, i.e. he’s not a a gorgeous lady.

But he is good people, and it was only a wee bit awkward telling him he was a sexy bitch while we shot in the middle of the street.

and

2. I’ve been wanting to find the best burger in LA for some time.  So once a week I’m gonna eat a burger at a different place, see if I can’t find the one true burger in this damned town. That starts today.  Today is BURGER DAY.

So, first up, with Ned’s help, I hit up In N’ Out Burger.  Fucking delicious.  Charbroiled, patty thin, but still significant, cheese delightfully melted.  I ordered it w/o onions or tomatoes, as those, while okay, really are just in the fucking way when it’s time to eat a burger.

Next week: who knows.  Recommendations & suggestions appreciated.

Grade: B+