Author: prachandrasoma

ERB

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The Place
Everson Royce Bar (ERB)
1936 7th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90021

I knew Everson Royce as a liquor store in Pasadena with a pretty good selection of whiskey and (apparently) a considerably better selection of wine. Today, it’s grown up into one of the trendiest bars in one of the trendiest neighborhoods (mine, incidentally – NBD but KBD) in Los Angeles. The façade is spartan: bare neon lights, buzzing, form the word “BAR” in white capitals. To the right of the threshold, a simple goal plaque bears the name of the bar and the year of its establishment — 2015.

Mozzaplex alumnus Matt Molina is the mind behind ERB’s menu. After a weirdly sudden (but evidently, not acrimonious) departure from the Mozza empire, Molina came here, to a scaled down bar-restaurant concept that is much less in the “high cuisine” category. From a tasteful mid-city icon with a voluminous wine list to a buzzing hipster hive with a menu section dedicated to boilermakers? Welcome to L.A.

Anyway, this burger has earned some pretty considerable hype. Nikhil, Bret, Shawn, and I went to give it a try.

The Order: Single Burger

The Price: $10

The Burger
Molina keeps it simple. The bun is buttered brioche. The patty is prime beef chuck overrun by decadent, soupy Tillamook that is something in between a topping and a sauce. There’s a thin film of a bright garlic aioli under the patty. It’s accompanied by a few wedges of dill pickle. All of the ingredients are expertly assembled and beautifully complementary. Operating at the curious nexus of minimalism and decadence, this burger is a surprising and satisfying offering.

The sweetness of the just-browned bun finishes with round notes of toasted butter that sidle up against the milky, sharp cheese before melting into the hardy, uncomplicated savor of the chuck. The aioli peeks out intermittently, not intrusive, but allowing it’s presence to be felt, and adding a subtle spark of creamy sharpness.

This might come as a surprise, but I won’t complain about the lack of toppings. There’s enough complexity in play here to keep your palate occupied from bite to bite. But when you offer a barebones presentation like this, it’s important not to cut corners on quality. Molina’s burger sidesteps the skimping issues that make Eggslut‘s burger a frustrating endeavor. The patty here is substantial enough to satisfy. The problem is in meat quality. For such a meat-centric offering, Molina asks a lot out of straight chuck. A more subtle – and yeah, maybe more indulgent – patty construction would have gone a long way towards making this burger something really special. You know, that or a few orders off the boilermaker menu.

The Ratings
Flavor: 9.60 / 10.00
Freshness/Quality: 8.80 / 10.00
Value: 8.70 / 10.00
Efficiency: 9.10 / 10.00
Creativity/Style: 8.00 / 10.00
Bun: 9.70 / 10.00
Patty: 7.80 / 10.00
Toppings: 8.50 / 10.00
Sauce: 8.60 / 10.00
Balance: 9.30 / 10.00

Total: 88.10 / 100.00

The Oinkster II

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The Place
The Oinkster
2005 Colorado Boulevard
Eagle Rock, CA 90041
Screen Shot 2016-01-11 at 10.38.44 PM

It’s pretty safe to say the Oinkster has made its mark on this Project. It was one of the earliest entries, and is linked by blood to the best burger here reviewed to date. Besides that, Andre Guerrero’s so-called “slow fast food” restaurant is quite beloved in its own right. Its house-cured pastrami is some of the best this city has to offer.

The Oinkster’s menu is a tiered affair, at least as far as its showcase pieces are concerned. Their two big-ticket items – the pastrami and the burger (nothing against the pulled pork, but it’s a bronze medalist here) – come in two versions: the first a more traditional iteration (the uncomplicated House Pastrami and the Classic burger) and the second a more, well, exotic version (the Oinkster Pastrami and the Royale).

It’s on this second tier that Andre Guerrero shines. In fact, those first tiers probably exist more as a show of respect for tradition than a reflection of his actual creative impulses as a chef. That first tier will give you a glimpse into his heart, which bears an abiding love for the classics. The more elaborate presentations, though, will show you his soul.

Shannon and I took a trip to the Oinkster last week – the O.G. one in Eagle Rock, mind you; not that Hollywood nonsense. She had an Oinkster Pastrami. I tried the Royale.

The Order: The Royale

The Price: $11.25

The Burger
IMG_0898At this point, you may be a) hungry, b) vaguely disgusted, c) physically uncomfortable at the sight of all that food, d) confused, and/or e) wondering what in God’s name is on that burger. I can help with problem (e); this monster features a 1/3 pound of Nebraska Angus beef, chili, pastrami, bacon, American cheese (though you have choices in that department – you can also have sharp cheddar or gruyere), lettuce, onions, pickles, and Thousand Island.

I’ll just let that sink in for a minute. Take all the time you need.

Yes, your arteries will protest. Yes, you’ll feel it all night. Yes, whatever your doubts are, they’re justified. This burger will take a piece of your heart (possibly quite literally, I can almost feel the sclerosed remnants of this caloric titan blocking my arteries like the bouncer at the door of Hakkasan).

I can’t tell you conclusively that it’s worth it. I don’t know if I think it was worth it for me, let alone for anyone else. But I can tell you this without hesitation or qualification: This burger is the most extravagantly ambitious item on Guerrero’s menu. It is a maximalist paean to the institution of the cheeseburger. It is a Jackson Pollock; what seems chaotic and arbitrary at first blush coalesces as you spend more time with it. By the time you walk away, it makes sense. You may not like it, but you get it.

There is a lot of meat here. The chili is thick and rich and bold. The pastrami is complex, peppery, smoky, salty, and delightful, but is rendered a subtlety by the brazen chili. The bacon adds a rustic crispness. The patty is juicy and cocksure, even in the presence of so many distractions. Its heft is necessary to anchor all the other flavors. Charred on the outside, but radiantly juicy on the inside, this patty is a worthy hub to this gustatory wheel of many spokes.

The other garnishes just can’t compete. The cheese is there, a vague and milky suggestion within an umami khamsin. The onions occasionally get a word in edgewise on the front end or finish of a bite, but don’t otherwise contribute much. The lettuce and tomato are throwaways – literally; they slid out of the burger, and I eventually got exasperated and threw them away. The Thousand Island isn’t good for much besides soaking through the bun and hastening its disintegration, which is a large part of the reason this burger is so hard to finish; the damn thing just doesn’t hang together. It physically falls apart.

Structural gripes aside, the meat-centric items on the burger hang together really well. The rest of the toppings fail to make an impression at all. That’s not all that surprising though. Their presence on the burger is an act of tokenism by Guerrero. It’s like the frat boys who let the one funny-looking nerdy dude hang out with them. It may not count for much, but bless their hearts for trying.

The Ratings
Flavor: 8.90 / 10.00
Freshness/Quality: 9.40 / 10.00
Value: 8.00 / 10.00
Efficiency: 8.30 / 10.00
Creativity/Style: 10.00 / 10.00
Bun: 7.50 / 10.00
Patty: 9.10 / 10.00
Toppings: 8.40 / 10.00
Sauce: 7.80 / 10.00
Balance: 8.80  /10.00

Total: 86.20 / 100.00

Burgerlords

~ prachandrasoma ~ 6 Comments

The Place
Burgerlords
943 North Broadway, #102
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Los Angeles is beautiful because no matter how well you know her, she keeps changing on you in subtle, unknowable ways. Just when I think I’ve got her figured out, I stop and look in time to see the sun hit her in a slightly different way. The only constant in my relationship with this town is that I love it. The reasons why I love it, though, like me, are always changing.

I could go into a big long thing about it, but that’s kind of what love is, isn’t it? Watching someone change – and changing yourself – but staying connected? Because eventually you learn to think of change not as the disappearance of the old, but the discovery of something new. And that’s how, after years and decades of marriage, people wake up together just as fiercely in love as they were on the morning after their wedding.

Or something. Gracious, don’t take my word for it; I know way more about burgers than love.

Here’s my point. My favorite thing about this project is that, no matter how exhaustively I research, no matter how much I think I know, there’s always a surprise just around the corner. A comment made in passing by an acquaintance. An almost-hidden spot that makes me double take (and maybe almost rear-end someone) driving down Broadway. A recommendation from someone I’d written off as a dilettante. A remark from someone who’s just trying to revive a conversation.

Two weeks ago, I didn’t know Burgerlords existed, even though it’s practically in my back yard. Now, I’m sitting here with the empty box in front of me, the wrapping still soggy with thousand islands, the fast fading smell of the best french fries I’ve ever eaten and a truly remarkable burger lingering like a cloud above my coffee table, writing about it. God, I love this city.

Here’s all you need to know by way of background: Burgerlords is the brainchild of the actual children of Andre Guerrero, who you know because he’s the guy behind the Oinkster. It used to be the name of an insanely popular Tumblr run by the same dudes. Now, it’s a restaurant hidden in a corner of Chinatown where it would never occur to you to head for food. Which is unfortunate for you. That’s why you read this, though.

The Order: Double Cheeseburger Combo

The Price: $10.00

The Burger
I’ll spare you the suspense. I know I haven’t eaten every burger in Los Angeles. But none of the ones I have eaten can beat this one. I won’t belabor that point too much. Instead, I’ll get to brass tacks.

This burger is quite obviously an homage to the Double-Double. And yes, living up to that progenitor is an audacious goal.

Obviously, this is a much smaller operation than In-N-Out. The Guerrero brothers have not proven that they can maintain quality in the face of expansion. But they have expressed no intention or ambition to expand. For now, Burgerlords is just a window in Chinatown that you can’t see from the street. When you go – and you must go – resist the temptation to try and see the future through that window. Instead, try and appreciate what’s in front of you. The burger being made with love, care, and respect. The sizzle and hiss of beef on burner. The crackle of frying potatoes. Focus on what’s there. It’s more than enough.

The patties are grass-fed beef. They call it their “tri-blend” without further elaboration. None is necessary. It has the hardiness of chuck, the sweet tenderness of short rib, and insinuates (without achieving, but come on, the thing is ten bucks) the complexity of Wagyu. It’s seasoned to utter perfection, with the seasoning bringing out the natural savor of the meat, amplifying rather than masking.

The bun is the most overt tip of the cap to In-N-Out. It matches its ancestor in spongy sweetness, and is the perfect bookend to this burger. The toppings are the weakest point; the lettuce is a little sad and wilted, the tomatoes are a bit watery. These are minor nits. The onions and cheese fare better, offering a personality and tastefully assertive flavor to contrast the anchoring umami undertones of the patty. The thousand island is the subtlest you’ll likely taste on a burger, but is the perfect, cooling counterpart to the beef and cheese.

As I read over the last couple paragraphs, which I’ve written and re-written, they don’t get the point across. It occurs to me now that there really is no getting the point across. These ingredients coalesce into something much more than the aggregation of their individual tastes. Just like a symphony is more than a bunch of instruments being played at the same time. There’s nothing special about this burger. But that’s what makes it so special.

There’s a line in 500 Days of Summer where one of the characters describes the girl of his dreams, and enumerates the many ways in which she is different from his girlfriend. Then he pauses, and says, “But Robin is better than the girl of my dreams – she’s real.”

I thought of that line while I was eating this burger. I could dream up an insane burger. One with foie gras, a bone marrow drip, St. Andre cheese, avocado, bacon, or any other number of exotic or indulgent ingredients. But dreams are dreams; they don’t necessarily reflect anything that would work in the waking world. Burgerlords hasn’t made the burger of my dreams. They’ve done something better. They’ve made what is to date the best burger I’ve ever had.

Burgerlords might not be good enough to make you fall in love with Los Angeles. It might not make you fall in love with burgers. (Although, if you didn’t love either of those two things, it’s not clear why you’re here reading this in the first instance.) But for those of us who already love either or both of those things, it’s a pretty damn good reminder of why.

The Ratings
Flavor: 9.80 / 10.00
Freshness/Quality: 9.60 / 10.00
Value: 9.80 / 10.00
Efficiency: 9.80 / 10.00
Creativity/Style: 7.00 / 10.00
Bun: 9.60 / 10.00
Patty: 9.60 / 10.00
Toppings: 8.60 / 10.00
Sauce: 9.40 / 10.00
Balance: 10.00 / 10.00

Total: 93.20 / 100.00

Magnolia House

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The Place
Magnolia House
492 South Lake Avenue
Pasadena, CA 91101
Screen Shot 2016-01-04 at 12.35.29 AM

In June of 2008, my friends and I converged on Pasadena for the summer holidays for the first time since we all had turned twenty-one. We were feverish with anticipation. We would roam free, we vowed, unencumbered by fear of being turned away by dour bouncers. We would paint our hometown red, the way we’d dreamed of doing for years.

It’s important to remember, though, that this part of our story takes place before the current demi-renaissance that Pasadena is experiencing. At that point, the anchor tenants in Old Town were, like, Moose McGillycuddy’s (RIP) and the 35er. Now, while the divey latter is still going strong thanks to the savvy ownership of its tea-party adherent ownership (or something), the former is long gone, as are most of the places that defined Old Town back then.

Suffice it to say, we turned elsewhere for our amusement, and became regulars at a local spot called Magnolia, which was located just a stone’s throw from Caltech. We would go there and order Craftsman beers, talk about the women in our lives (or the lack thereof), cast nervous glances at groups of young ladies in the bar but never work up the courage to go say hello (an affliction which, for some of us (me), stubbornly persists in present day), reminisce about the times gone by, and relish our dreams for those yet to pass. You know, all that sentimental best friends 4EVA bullshit.

A few years back, we were chagrined to find that our beloved Magnolia had closed. By this time though, Old Town was well on the rise, and the process of bar prosthesis was relatively painless. We found Lucky Baldwin’s, T. Boyle’s Tavern, and King’s Row Gastropub, and more recently, the Blind Donkey (an excellent bar with a better selection of whiskey).

Then, like a bolt from the blue, Magnolia reopened as Magnolia House. It had been redecorated, reimagined, and boasted a brand new menu of trendy shared plates (ooh, bone marrow!) and extravagantly named craft cocktails (I bullshit you not, I drank something called a Oaxacan Blood Winter, which sounds like something Cormac McCarthy would drink before unceremoniously killing everyone in a novel).

Anyway, it was reported by a reliable source (Lindsey, Kevin’s older sister) that Magnolia House had a pretty remarkable burger. Obviously, my (figurative) radar started beeping. Kevin, Greg, Sarah, and I met up at Magnolia House for drinks, and Kevin and I – being the most adorable couple at the table – split a burger.

The Order: House Burger, cooked medium

The Price: $13.00

The Burger
Sadly, my camera is acting up, so I have trouble taking pictures of the burgers. Sorry – I’ll fix that post haste. With that unpleasant little prefatory remark out of the way, let’s talk about the food.

The Magnolia House burger features house-made American cheese, bourbon onions, a dill pickle remoulade, and bacon nestled between brioche buns. (More traditional garnishes like lettuce and tomato? Not in this house.) The beef was, per server recommendation, cooked medium. At Magnolia House, this means a warm center the color of a sky teetering on the edge of sunset – just a kiss of pink. It had none of the grill-roughened blackness or sizzling charm of some of its more aggressively charred counterparts. Nor was the meat of any notable quality – for better or worse. It was juicy and well-cooked, but ultimately a fairly pedestrian centerpiece.

The devil, however, lies in the details. And the finer points of this burger are excellent. The cheese was stupendous, a milky sheet with the consistency of magma, oozing languidly over the sides of the patty. Its mild, buttery sweetness didn’t just complement the patty – it elevated it. As I ate it, I found myself surprised that Magnolia House does not advertise this as the House Cheeseburger: after all, the cheese is the star of this show.

Remoulade, for those of you who live normal lives where you don’t use absurd words like remoulade, is aioli’s slightly snobby cousin. Usually mayonnaise-based (though sometimes it’s just spiced-up aioli), it’s not actually that unusual to find chopped pickles in it. So yeah, Magnolia’s decision to call this “dill pickle remoulade” is kind of like saying “cow’s milk ice cream” – there are other ways to make it, but come on.

All that aside, the sauce is good. It’s tangy, and its consistency dovetails nicely with the cheese. They don’t cross-pollinate enough to create a confused gustatory cloud, but they interact well enough to create a suspension. The result on the palate feels like alternating flickering bursts of sauce and cheese.

The bacon and onions are also both just fine. Usually, they find themselves coated in sauce and cheese, which tend to obfuscate their pure taste a bit. In the case of the bacon, that’s not that big of a deal, because the slices are thick enough that the flavor can’t be contained, just delayed. As for the onions, the loss of their flavor isn’t too much of a loss at all, as they’re the weakest garnish. They’re flaccid from booze-drenched caramelization, and weirdly flavorless. There’s a little residual sweetness from that bourbon that’s nice enough, but nothing to write home about.

All told, the meat in this burger is brought to life by a provocative sauce and cheese combination. That’s not a customary recipe for success, but as it turns out, it is a recipe for a pretty damn decent burger.

The Ratings
Flavor: 8.80 / 10.00
Freshness/Quality: 8.00 / 10.00
Value: 8.00 / 10.00
Efficiency: 8.10 / 10.00
Creativity/Style: 8.20 / 10.00
Bun: 8.10 / 10.00
Patty: 7.80 / 10.00
Toppings: 8.70 / 10.00
Sauce: 8.90 / 10.00
Balance: 8.40 / 10.00

Total: 83.00 / 100.00

Bottega Louie

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The Place
Bottega Louie
700 South Grand Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90017
Screen Shot 2015-10-29 at 10.19.12 PM
Bottega Louie is utterly insane. For being in the middle of a just-okay section of Downtown (which, in spite of its current nascent renaissance, remains a just-okay enclave of Los Angeles), it’s so unbelievably scene, it almost defies belief. The quotient of Kim Kardashian wannabes is nothing short of astonishingly high. Over-conditioned bistre hair pulled back into impossibly tight ponytails that shine like dying stars. Designer dresses hug implausible bodily curvatures that veer out of the realm of sexual allure and wind up firmly ensconced in the realm of the creepily artificial. Plunging necklines reveal silicone fjords. Impossibly sour faces are caked in makeup that, by all appearances, was applied by their friend who just got fired from Sephora or something. Scythelike vermillion fingernails scrape against smartphone screens framing selfies.

So yeah. Bottega Louie kills it as far as atmosphere is concerned.

Seriously, what an odd mix of people. I wonder where they all come from. It’s not just people trying to pass as Kardashian cousins. It’s families. Elderly couples. Girls’ nights. Bros. And even a few dates. And the cohort of which I was a member – a group of newly minted lawyers fresh off our first day of work. Yes, this eclectic clientele truly is what parties are made of.

The Order: Hamburger (Wagyu, Bibb lettuce, Brandywine tomato, red onion, aioli; cheese added)

The Price: $16.00

The Burger
IMG_0565
I’ll admit it. I wanted the meatball sliders. So you might rightly aver that my heart wasn’t quite in this one. Or, if you were inclined to give me the benefit of the doubt, you might say that this burger doesn’t really belong on this menu. The food here is basically Italian, with aberrational suggestions of Mexican (ceviche), Creole (crab beignets), and French (niçoise salad). As such, a burger is something of an incongruous item.

This one is a relatively straightforward presentation. The focus, at least nominally, seems to be the patty, so I’ll start there. Wagyu beef is coveted for its rich marbling and intense flavor. Maybe this patty had some of that going on, but it was cooked right out of it. Our server recommended it be ordered medium. This savaged the flavor right out of the patty, replacing whatever subtle richness the oleaginous unsaturated fat might have imparted with the milquetoast savor of chuck. Damn shame.

The toppings, in the aggregate, fared only slightly better. The lettuce was crisp enough, but too dry. The cheese was of the perfect consistency, but disappointingly unassertive. The aioli was far too brash, elbowing out the rest of the garnishes. To give you an idea of the flavor, imagine that someone screamed the word “garlic” into some mayonnaise. The onions were so unexceptional I almost forgot they were there. Only the tomatoes were memorable: rich, sunny, sweet, and juicy. But ultimately, they could not save this burger from itself. A combination of poor preparation and a vastly too-aggressive sauce doomed it.

The vision seems to be a burger that would be exceptional but understated, where a simple arrangement of excellent ingredients would harmonize to create a classed-up iteration of an American standard. At that, it fails. So in seeking to achieve dignified simplicity, this burger, with its atrociously assertive aioli, comes off about as classy and genuine as Kim Kardashian. Sadly, like many of the customers at this restaurant, this burger is just trying way too hard and achieving way too little. Tragically apropos.

Either way, I should have ordered the meatballs. Shit.

The Ratings
Flavor: 6.20 / 10.00
Freshness/Quality: 7.50 / 10.00
Value: 6.60 / 10.00
Efficiency: 5.20 / 10.00
Creativity/Style: 6.00 / 10.00
Bun: 7.00 / 10.00
Patty: 6.30 / 10.00
Toppings: 6.50 / 10.00
Sauce: 4.50 / 10.00
Balance: 5.20 / 10.00

Total: 60.90 / 100.00

Plan Check Kitchen + Bar

~ prachandrasoma ~ 2 Comments

The Place
Plan Check Kitchen + Bar
1111 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, California 90017
Screen Shot 2015-10-29 at 9.37.57 PMAt this point it’s pretty safe to say that Plan Check has blown up. Once little more than an insider’s favorite on Sawtelle, it eased it’s way out to Fairfax before venturing Downtown. Now, apparently, it’s even got plans to take over Pasadena. Now, Plan Check’s expansion isn’t the only indicator of Ernesto Uchimura’s entrepreneurial spirit (or, one might worry, culinary restlessness). The Salty Dog, the progeny of his recent partnership with Princess Cruises (I know), is another indication.

While it is admittedly concerning that Uchimura is taking to the seven seas, his innovative impulses and the skeptical eye he casts on the conventional is what makes Plan Check so alluring, and ultimately, so successful. Skepticism is not the same as dismissal. Uchimura does not reject the conventional out of hand. Nor, however, does he respect it simply because it has been done and repeated. His goal with Plan Check seems to be to elevate the conventional.

That, of course, is a laudable goal. And based on the measure of success he and business partner Terry Heller have found with Plan Check, he seems to be on to something. Abbe and I went to evaluate this (and the other highlights of the menu, which include the fried chicken). This dinner brought to light several things, including without limitation a) she’s a relatively big deal, b) I’m not, and c) it was surprisingly easy to convince myself that I had anything to do with the free dessert our server gave us, and d) they serve a burger worth talking about.

The Order: PCB (Plan Check Burger: Americanized dashi cheese, ketchup leather, schmaltz onions, mixed pickles, crunch bun)

The Price: $12.00

The Burger
IMG_0550
Let’s all admit one thing right out of the gates: none of us really know what any of the ingredients mean. The descriptions are indecipherable, shrouded in a thick fog of hipster pretension. Seriously, Ernesto Uchimura speaks a language so obscure and awesome that only he understands it. He’s like the windtalkers, only he’s making up words. And he’s a hipster. So he’s nothing like the windtalkers.

I may not be able to tell you what they are, but I can tell you how they made me feel: good. The cheese was superlative. It was as gooey as cheese whiz, a dripping, milky, amorphous coat that sits dripping atop the patty upon arrival before being almost absorbed into it. That’s a weird thing: the patty is like a sponge. It sucks in the flavors of the cheese and the dehydrated ketchup (ketchup leather is a deeply unappetizing but oddly apt moniker for it). The meat itself is healthily charred, competently cooked, and subtly infused with the flavors of the other toppings as well as that of the grill and the simple salt-heavy seasoning.

Rather than featuring bold, assertive flavors, the Plan Check Burger suggests them. Whispering remnants of ketchup and cheese and salt and char intermingle with that of the beef, giving it a complexity that far outstrips its inherent flavor profile. Try as I might, I’ll never understand how Uchimura managed that. Science.

The pickles are bright and sour, but delicate enough not to overshadow the subtle interactions between the other ingredients. This is a professionally assembled burger that is masterfully crafted to project deceptive simplicity. But this burger is anything but simple. It is a symphony heard from a distance; a muted assembly of the bold. Even the bun is deceptively simple, offering a gentle crunch to complement its sweet, cloudlike delicacy. Only the onions are forgettable; insipid and blunt, they are lost in the otherwise expert shuffle.

This is an innovative burger. From its solid state sauce presentations and saucy cheese to its impressionable patty and spry pickles, you will be surprised. At the price point, it is something approaching highway robbery. This is one to order and reorder. Though imperfect, it is one you will remember.

The Ratings
Flavor: 9.20 / 10.00
Freshness/Quality: 9.00 / 10.00
Value: 9.30 / 10.00
Efficiency: 8.30 / 10.00
Creativity/Style: 9.40 / 10.00
Bun: 8.90 / 10.00
Patty: 9.00 / 10.00
Toppings: 8.20 / 10.00
Sauce: 8.80 / 10.00
Balance: 9.70 / 10.00

Total: 89.80 / 100.00

Grill ‘Em All

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The Place
Grill ‘Em All
19 East Main Street
Alhambra, CA 91801
Screen Shot 2015-10-21 at 1.40.56 AM
Okay, so straight up: Grill ‘Em All is the weirdest place I’ve been to since the Project started. No doubt. Second place is so far behind that I literally don’t even know what it is.

Here’s the story: Ryan Harkins and Matt Chernus won The Great Food Truck Race and then bought this snug little cranny in an Alhambra strip mall. Grill ‘Em All, for the philistines in my readership, is a play on the name of a pretty rad album by Metallica (you know, before they started sucking…and also sucking).

The entire place buys…well, heavily into the heavy metal theme. While I waited for my food, I listened to dated (and second-rate) metal and watched a rerun of a Sting v. Ric Flair NWA Heavyweight Championship match. It’s a weird theme on its own, but throw in the hilarious contrast with the unavoidably milquetoast clientele, and spending a half hour there borders on surreal.

Having said that, the theme doesn’t really seem like a gimmick so much as the product of a genuine fascination with heavy metal. Given that basically all of the cultural references this place makes would go soaring over the British faded heads of the One Direction-obsessed members of the digital native generation, I think it’s a safer bet to assume Harkins and Chernus just like metal music a lot. Probably more importantly, Grill ‘Em All has endeared itself to foodie types for blending culinary innovation with caloric opulence. I went to try one of their many artery-cloggers.

The Order: Napalm Death (half pound patty, pepper jack, pickled jalapeño, cream cheese, habanero aioli, jalapeño poppers)

The Price: $12

The Burger
IMG_0538
I mean, wow. It’s hard to know where to start. This burger is unbelievably overwhelming. Basically, it presents different iterations of the same two flavor components: chili and cheese. The idea is that this burger is supposed to be punishingly spicy. It you’ve got any tolerance for heat at all, you’ll laugh that right off. The jalapeños are meek, and whatever bite the habanero might have had goes out the window because aioli is just never spicy.

Having said that, the various chili-centric ingredients allow for the flavor of the chiles to shine through. This is relatively rare, given that most burgers do not feature peppers in any central way. In this burger, the flavor – especially of the jalapeños – is very present in the flavor profile. The jalapeños have a gentle heat (blunted by the pickling or, in the case of the poppers, the cheddar) and a peppery sweetness which emerges from the caustic cut of the vinegar. The poppers are crispy on the outside and almost impossibly gooey on the inside. They’re a decadent addition, messy and unpretentious.

The patty is a half pound cooked medium rare. Grill ‘Em All’s medium rare is a bit overcooked for my tastes, but still juicy enough. There is very little char on the patty, which is also relatively lightly seasoned. As a result, for all its heft, the meat doesn’t really communicate much in the way of personality. It’s a little insipid, and not a worthy centerpiece. It’s saved a bit by the habanero aioli, which is surprisingly complex and picks up the floral flavor of the habanero pretty well. It makes up for what the patty lacks in charm.

The various cheeses are the most interesting part of the burger. They neutralize most of the heat, which allows the flavor of the chiles to rise. But on their own, cream cheese and pepper jack are a counterintuitive combination. The pepper jack is pepper jack; it starts with a kick but quickly retreats into buttery delicacy. The cream cheese, melted from all the heat, comes in on the finish. It is relatively mild, but a little funkier. It really dominates the back-end of each bite.

At first blush, this burger might seem to have a little bit of a kitchen sink vibe. But the ingredients hang together surprisingly well. The result is a hugely unconventional but surprisingly coherent presentation. With all that’s going on, there’s a little more here than the bun can contain at times, but the Napalm Death tastes a lot more sophisticated than it sounds. Or, sophisticated for a burger with jalapeño poppers on it, anyway. It may not be as sinister (or as spicy) as its name may indicate, but it’s still a good choice if you’re in the mood for something unconventional.

The Ratings
Flavor: 8.20 / 10.00
Freshness/Quality: 7.90 / 10.00
Value: 8.80 / 10.00
Efficiency: 8.10 / 10.00
Creativity/Style: 10.00 / 10.00
Bun: 8.00 / 10.00
Patty: 7.30 / 10.00
Toppings: 8.50 / 10.00
Sauce: 8.90 / 10.00
Balance: 8.70 / 10.00

Total: 84.40 / 100.00

République

~ prachandrasoma ~ Leave a comment

The Place
624 S. La Brea Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90036
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It’s hard to find two places more serious about brunch than New York and Los Angeles. Without getting tangled in the weeds about who does brunch “better” – God help us all if we go a-tumbling down that rabbit hole – République on La Brea will give you a pretty good window into how Los Angeles does brunch. Oddly enough, the mid-city/Miracle Mile area is kind of a perfect cross-section of the city. It’s the rare part of town that is just far enough west that the most intrepid west-LA types will venture over if the brunch is sufficiently alluring. And it’s just far enough east that Silver Lake hipsters will muster up a couple shits to give, throw on their circular-framed sunglasses and/or wide-brim hats and get out.

To the extent that you don’t see how mid-city itself can be that alluring, by now it should be pretty clear that République has established itself as being worth a trip from just about anywhere. An expansive space with a skylight ceiling, Walter Mantzke’s spot doesn’t look like much from the outside. The restaurant’s austere logo is painted onto the concrete in black and white. The only reason this place might catch your eye is that – especially on Sundays – there’s a hell of a line outside.

It’s also been held that République whips up a burger that is “criminally underrated.” Consider my interest piqued. McKenna and I went to check it out. Undeterred by her last encounter with eggs, she ordered a croque madame. Because I’m a colossal francophobe, I judged her aggressively and ordered a burger. We (okay, mainly I) aggressively judged people like this. Proper usage of the words “who” and “whom” was discussed – and when I say “discussed,” of course, I mean explained. By me. And this.

The Order: Dry-Aged Beef Burger, medium rare

The Price: $15

The Burger
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As I ate this burger, a couple things dawned on me. First, messy things are made more satisfying to eat by the very fact of their messiness. Now I see what those Carl’s Jr. ads are getting at (still no official word on why they exclusively feature sexually attractive, scantily clad women). Second – and more directly relevant here – I’m a real sucker for the classics.

Admittedly, a night watching YouTube videos with my friend Andy will reveal this penchant pretty decisively. I mean, in the past couple of weeks, I have sat in silent reverence and watched the music video to “Free Fallin'”. In its entirety. Without a scintilla of irony. Brief sidenote: if you understand why that’s funny, you’re almost undoubtedly more of an insufferable piece of shit than you realize.

I suppose that’s really neither here nor there. République is a “fancy” restaurant. Most “fancy” restaurants fall into the trap of unnecessarily embellishing their burgers in a “fancy” way. Oh, what? Yeah, no, that isn’t white cheddar. In the first place, it’s way too crumbly to be white cheddar, but it’s actually pule. Pule? You haven’t heard of it? Yeah, no, most people haven’t. It’s actually a Serbian cheese made from donkey milk. Yeah, it costs almost $2000 per pound. I know, that’s why we charge $57 for this burger. You’ll really like it. You know, if you can like, you know, appreciate it.

République sidesteps that problem pretty effectively by adopting a tried and true formula and not changing it. At all. In any regard. The focus is not on reinvention of the wheel for its own sake. Rather, Mantzke et al. emphasize execution. They want this burger to evoke memories of backyard barbecues, with bright sun, casually charred burgers, impossibly fresh garnishes, and an absence of pretension that emanates not from laziness, but from a joyful reverence for the classic formulation of the dish.

And that brings me back to the classics. See, kids? That’s called closing the loop.

What I really appreciate about this burger is that there is so little to tell. The beef is dry-aged and utterly astonishing (they recommend it medium rare – you should listen). The garnishes are of the highest quality and freshness, especially the indulgent, meaty discs of tomato. The bun is a sunny brioche peppered with poppy seeds – delicious, but it did not take very long for it to soak through and start disintegrating. The grilled onions add a creeping, silvery sweetness without dominating the flavor profile of the burger. The Thousand Island imparts a gentle, foundational buzz of tangy flavor to each bite.

The inspiration for this burger, pretty plainly, is In-N-Out Burger. And while it certainly goes blow-for-blow as far as freshness and ingredient quality is concerned, the patty is more massive and central. It’s got more thickness and heft than a Double Double, which means, the flavor of the meat overwhelms any pretreatment of the patty (whereas, at In-N-Out, the charred sweetness of the beef is complemented beautifully by the pre-grill seasoning).

It’s not entirely fair to compare République to In-N-Out in the way you might be tempted to do so. The different approach to patty structure alone makes the comparison a pretty fraught one. But the commitment to freshness, execution, consistency, and – above all – simplicity is the same. And its high praise to tell you that this burger, in those ways, evoked the Californian burger titan. But, I’ll be damned if it didn’t.

The Ratings:
Flavor: 9.70 / 10.00
Freshness/Quality: 9.70 / 10.00
Value: 8.90 / 10.00
Efficiency: 7.50 / 10.00
Creativity/Style: 7.20 / 10.00
Bun: 8.60 / 10.00
Patty: 9.30 / 10.00
Toppings: 9.70 / 10.00
Sauce: 8.60 / 10.00
Balance: 9.00 / 10.00

Total: 88.20 / 100.00

The Top Ten (So Far…Again)

~ prachandrasoma ~ Leave a comment

All right, it’s been a while since I told you the best spots to grab a burger in this town of ours, and there have been some changes in the interim. So, here they are again. The ten best burgers I’ve eaten so far on this journey of mine (mind you, I’m only just now nearing the 20% completion mark, so take this with a grain of salt):

  1. In-N-Out (93.00 / 100.00)
  2. The Bowery (91.90 / 100.00)
  3. Super Burger (90.00 / 100.00)
  4. The Flintridge Proper (88.70 / 100.00)
  5. Badmaash (88.10 / 100.00)
  6. Pie ‘N Burger (87.10 / 100.00)
  7. Belcampo Meat Co. (85.20 / 100.00)
  8. Father’s Office (84.90 / 100.00)
  9. Cassell’s Hamburgers (84.80 / 100.00)
  10. Tie: Eggslut and the Spicy Chicken Sandwich at Chick-Fil-A (both received an 83.70 / 100.00)

Okay, so now you’ve got some hot new spots to try, and you know which burgers from the previous installation stood the test of time. Go forth and get ’em.

Stout

~ prachandrasoma ~ 1 Comment

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Alexandros Kagianaris and Charles Lew are pretty serious about casual dining. They envision neighborhood joint Stout as being a place where – to quote their website – “club goers meet the culinary elite for burgers and beer.” Leaving aside the fact that I’m not sure who fits into either of those groups, the thrust seems to be that they’re aiming to appeal to a broad swath of people. It’s one of those restaurants that’s trying to please foodies and philistines alike. They do it by using high-quality beef, and assembling burgers with interesting (but not too challenging) toppings.

Regardless, Stout has received its fair share of accolades. L.A. Weekly called its eponymous burger the ninth best burger in Los Angeles. And if there’s one thing we know, it’s that ninth is the new first. Anyhow, Stout has three locations: Hollywood (on Cahuenga), Studio City (on Ventura), and Santa Monica (on Santa Monica).

McKenna and I went to Stout’s Studio City location to put its bona fides to the test. Our trip was not without adventure: She got a burger with an over-easy egg on it; as she picked it up, the yolk split and spilled out of the bun like lava over the rim of a volcano, completely drenching her hands. It bears mentioning that she survived the explosion and took down the burger like a champ (even if it meant having hands so covered in yolk and sauce that she had to drink her beer through a straw. Which she did. Also like a champ).

For her trouble – or maybe just for her scintillating personality – our server really took quite a shining to McKenna (probably because she didn’t hear all the shit McKenna was talking about the evening’s playlist). They bonded over the course of the night, not always (albeit quite often) at my expense. But a dose of well-intentioned derision is a small price to pay for seeing someone’s hands coated in egg yolks like a vegan’s ideation of Jack the Ripper.

I’m digressing. The TL;DR version is that we went and ate burgers. One exploded. Beer was sipped through a straw.

The Place
Stout Burgers & Beer
11262 Ventura Boulevard
Studio City, CA 91604

The Order: The Imperialist (roasted tomato, ketchup, aged cheddar, mustard relish), cooked “pink” (as opposed to “not pink” – the other choice)

The Price: $11.00

The Burger
Let’s get this out of the way: I don’t know why they call it the Imperialist. I’m also fully aware that I didn’t eat the flagship burger at Stout, the one for which it earned such acclaim. Obviously, I will be back to Stout for its namesake burger, but I was jonesing for something a bit on the subtler end. So obviously, I ordered a burger called the Imperialist.

Like I said, I don’t know why the call it that. But I have an idea. I think it’s because they took a perfectly good, perfectly functional, perfectly traditional ingredient combination – cheddar, ketchup, and mustard – and invaded that tranquil space with some weird newfangled addition. Listen, roasted tomato is a dicey proposition in any context. Put it all up in the shit of a classic burger, and it’s just invasive (not to mention arbitrary).

It was aggressively smoky and then concentratedly sweet. The ferocious – almost saccharine – back-end of the tomato bled into the ketchup, brought out the sweetness of the (excellent) bun, and really accented the notes of fruit in the cheddar (simultaneously blunting its acidic and nutty quality), making a sunburnt sweetness the dominant element of the early part of every bite.

Both McKenna and I noticed that the patty was a little dry. This probably had something to do with the fact that it was coarse and loosely packed, which gave the meat’s juices room to escape. The bottom of the patty was coated in mustard relish, a weird but very pungent sauce that pretty much overwhelmed the finish of every bite.

My brown person bias maybe coming into play here, but I’ve never been a fan of imperialism. One of my friends – who shall remain nameless and blameless – argues that imperialism gave the backward masses of the developing world a sense for administrative efficiency and built us roads and rail (mind you, he’s 84% joking when he says shit like that). Be that as it may, I think the colonial footprint is a harmful one. Stout’s Imperialist, sadly, is no more successful.

The Ratings
Flavor: 6.10 / 10.00
Freshness/Quality: 8.40 / 10.00
Value: 8.10 / 10.00
Efficiency: 8.00 / 10.00
Creativity/Style: 6.10 / 10.00
Bun: 9.00 / 10.00
Patty: 7.00 / 10.00
Toppings: 6.20 / 10.00
Sauce: 5.20 / 10.00
Balance: 6.90 / 10.00

Total: 71.00 / 100.00