The Habit Burger Grill

March 5, 2017 ~ prachandrasoma ~ Leave a comment

The Place
The Habit Burger Grill
Various Locations

You may remember The Habit made waves a couple years back. Playing the role of dark horse to perfection, the Santa Barbara-based West Coast mainstay placed first in Consumer Reports’ fast-food survey, beating out other local heroes like In-N-Out (spoiler alert: that’s unvarnished sacrilege), and larger outlets like Steak ‘n Shake and Smashburger.

Now obviously, it’s far from clear that you, I, or anyone else should trust or defer to the culinary preferences of people who only got a say because they subscribe to Consumer Reports (like, consider how many people you know who subscribe to Consumer Reports). Having said that, the people surveyed ate almost 100,000 meals between them. So if nothing else, there’s a good amount of data behind this survey.

For a burger chain you’ve probably never heard of, the Habit is quite an old mainstay. It was founded in 1969, and has since steadily expanded throughout California, creeping into Arizona and Utah as well. It migrated east into New Jersey recently too, but it’s still definitely a child of the West. With thanks to Juno for making it possible, Bret and I took five from work to grab this old standard for lunch.

The Order: Double Charburger with Cheese

The Price: $4.95

The Burger
For such a well-established outfit, The Habit certainly has escaped widespread attention or acclaim. That might have something to do with its sort of silly branding (their truck invites you to “Get up in [their] grill” – see what they did there?), or the fact that it just sort of feels like a shoddy fast casual restaurant.

Far from the heaven-white, spit-shined gleam of an In-N-Out burger, the hidden gem illicitness of a Burgerlords, or even the ruddy and unvarnished appeal of the Oinkster, The Habit’s brick and mortar spots have all the charm of, like, a T.G.I. Friday’s. You’ll find them nestled in shopping blocks, flanked by, say, a Nordstrom Rack and HomeGoods. It’s almost impossible to take seriously, especially for a well-heeled foodie type. One expects servers with pique polos covered in buttons, fried onions fashioned into crisp flowers, seafood from oceans unknown, and steaks whose origin is impossible to discern.

At first blush, you might be struck by what feels like a too-expansive menu, replete with salads nobody ought ever order, an odd albacore sandwich that is just strange enough to intrigue (but not intriguing enough to order), and some curious sides (tempura green beans, anyone?). While it’s probably true that the menu would benefit from a good editorial trim, there is enough weirdness on this menu to suggest an undercurrent of sophisticated curiosity that might make this burger worth trying.

Readily, I will admit my anticipatory scorn was building heavily as I approached this burger. In a swell of self-congratulatory elitism, I prepared to dismiss the Consumer Reports survey result as just some sampling tomfoolery, reflecting the unsophisticated preferences of some culinary neophytes who lack the time, mind, or means to frequent the truly good restaurants.

Sadly, this is not (entirely) a redemption narrative. I was undoubtedly being unfair (and a big jerk) in my preconceptions about The Habit. That survey was, after all, just a survey about fast food. But in aid of crystalline clarity, let me state this unequivocally: this is not the best burger – fast food or otherwise – in this city, let alone the country. It is, however, a well (not perfectly) executed Californian classic, certainly much better than you might expect from the kitschy look of the place.

Envision a slightly heftier, meatier iteration of the (still comfortably superior) Double-Double with a worse bun, and you’re in the Habit’s airspace. The bun is a simple white bread bun with the lightest kiss of sweetness. It was slightly dry but adsorbent enough to keep things from getting messy. The lettuce was shredded, flirting with the mayonnaise and the pickles hidden below, creating a piquant and crisp cushion to anchor the whole flavor profile of the burger. The tomato wasn’t exactly market-fresh, but gave a juicy enough punch. The caramelized onions were a nice touch, sweet and sharp on the tongue without being too soupy (though they were a bit stringy and hard to eat).

The Habit distinguishes itself – for better or worse – in the size of the patties. They are massive crisped discs of beef, with slabs of melted cheese draped over them like fire blankets. They are big enough to decisively take center stage in the flavor profile of this burger without completely drowning out the other ingredients. True to the burger’s name, they have a solid char, which gives a distant savory bitterness to the front-end of every bite. Sadly, they’re also a bit overcooked, which dries them out a fair amount. What the patties bring to the table in flavor, then, is sort of ruined by their textural deficiencies. And given their sheer size, these faults are tough to ignore, and aren’t really balanced by the burger’s other virtues.

Having said all that, I can understand why the Habit would have gotten itself something of a following. It’s an undeniably excellent deal at the price point – value-wise, it definitely falls in the same category as In-N-Out. And it probably deserves to be slotted in with that class of burgers that are “slightly better than fast food” but “not really gourmet.” And it handily beat out my elitist preconceptions. But you should quickly disabuse yourself of the notion that the Habit can lay a finger to In-N-Out. I have mulled over that result for a good long time, and have come no closer to a colorable explanation for it. But the fact remains that while I may never understand how the Habit beats out In-N-Out in the minds of the Consumer Reports readership, it isn’t difficult to understand the restaurant’s appeal. It may be overblown, but it isn’t undeserved.

The Ratings:
Flavor: 8.40 / 10.00
Freshness / Quality: 8.00 / 10.00
Value: 9.70 / 10.00
Efficiency: 9.70 / 10.00
Creativity / Style: 7.50 / 10.00
Bun: 7.90 / 10.00
Patty: 7.90 / 10.00
Toppings: 8.00 / 10.00
Sauce: 7.50 / 10.00
Balance: 8.40 / 10.00

Total: 83.00 / 100.00

The Top Ten (November 1, 2016)

November 1, 2016November 1, 2016 ~ prachandrasoma ~ Leave a comment

The passage of Halloween means that the holidays are upon us. That means it’s time to engage in behavior that makes you feel deeply guilty at season’s end. What better way to do that than by checking out the brand new, and thoroughly shaken-up, top ten burgers in Los Angeles?

Petit Trois (95.70 / 100.00)
Burgerlords (93.20 / 100.00)
In-N-Out Burger (93.00 / 100.00
The Bowery (91.90 / 100.00)
Fritzi (91.10 / 100.00)
Plan Check Kitchen + Bar (Bleuprint) (90.70 / 100.00)
Super Burger (90.00 / 100.00)
Plan Check Kitchen + Bar (Plan Check Burger) (89.80 / 100.00)
Dudley Market (88.90 / 100.00)
The Flintridge Proper (88.70 / 100.00)

Get out there – these burgers aren’t going to eat themselves. And happy holidays.

Winsome

August 29, 2016August 29, 2016 ~ prachandrasoma ~ Leave a comment

The Place
Winsome
1115 Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Winsome is not on Sunset Boulevard. Head west down Sunset (away from Downtown) and as you pass Beaudry, you’ll see the Holy Community Church on your right. Beyond that, you’ll see a new apartment building made of white stone and glass. Just past the church, make a right on to White Knoll Drive. That’s where Winsome is, in the ground floor of the aforementioned stone and glass building. Just a public service announcement, lest you wind up wandering aimless and befuddled down Sunset like Kelsey, Erin, and I did (that is, until finally we gave up and called the restaurant to whimper a desperate request for directions).

I couldn’t help but wonder why they say they’re on Sunset if the restaurant demonstrably is not on Sunset? Well, this is Los Angeles, which means it’s all about appearances. It’s easier to brand yourself as a trendy new Los Angeles eatery if you’ve got an address on an iconic Los Angeles thoroughfare. Per contra, it’s much harder to do it when you front some tributary with a name that sounds like a sleepy cul-de-sac. And if people get confused or lost by this branding chicanery, all the better; being impossible to find in spite being on a major street is another mark of effortless cool.

Make no mistake, though. This place is far more polished than Echo Park, a neighborhood renowned more for its unvarnished charm than for its sparkling new real estate developments. It’s beautiful for being the situs of a cultural collision of sorts, where numerous ethnic and socioeconomic groups live side by side. There’s something aspirational about that Echo Park.

Winsome represents the “new” (or, if you prefer, the “approaching”) Echo Park. The building that houses it resembles one of those swanky new high rises over by L.A. Live. It’s the kind of building that one suspects will be ubiquitous in a few years’ time. It’s the kind of building that multiplies and slowly, inexorably drains the charm right out of a place, until all that’s left is a spiritually vacant enclave occupied by the seemingly inexhaustible supply of incalculably basic USC alumni. It’s a nice enough building in itself, but as more of them crop up, before long, Echo Park will be a place where you only see soul if it’s immediately followed by the word “cycle.”

Right, anyway; the restaurant.

Winsome has developed a fair amount of buzz as a brunch-and-pastry spot. Its light-wood, airy interior has the body of a diner but the heart of a case study house. The long, dining room is flanked along one edge by a long, white oak bar and on the other by booths with windows for walls. This breezy, midcentury space spills out onto an idyllic patio, on which strings of lights hang languidly above. This charming outdoor area is loosely packed with amateur food photographers trying to no-filter their way to fame.

But it still bears markers of the old Echo Park. Our laconic waiter was clad all in black but for old white Reeboks and an apron the color of pond scum (the latter of which was splattered inexplicably with persimmon-hued paint). He oozed edgy and aloof Echo Park cool, and he did his job without all the fanfare of interpersonal warmth.

Atmosphere aside, the place is renowned for its brunch offerings. The pastries are local celebrities and, in the aggregate, merit the acclaim they receive (the strawberry-vanilla brioche is especially superb). The caramelized grapefruit is a novel idea, but largely ham-fisted in execution. The slathering of honey provides a syrupy front end to the flavor profile, yielding a product that tastes like Taylor Swift’s personality: saccharine on the surface, but ultimately and fundamentally marred by a gothic – almost corporate, definitely innate – bitterness.

There is a burger on the menu, but no one really talks about it. I went with Kelsey and Erin to find out if they ought to talk about it.

The Order: The Burger

The Price: $16

The Burger
There’s a scene in The Fountainhead where Ellsworth Toohey says to Howard Roark, “Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us.” Roark replies, “But I don’t think of you.” That exchange flitted into my head as I tried to collect my thoughts in preparation for writing this; I just didn’t have that many thoughts to collect.

On the face of it, there’s nothing objectionable about this burger, and one might even think there is the potential for something quite good. The bun is a seeded pan de mie sourced from Gjusta. A bun from a different bakery is an odd choice for a restaurant that prides itself on its superlative baked goods, but I suppose Gjusta is an estimable choice if you’ve chosen to outsource your bun-making. Delicately sweet and soft at its heart with perfectly toasted edges, this bun was the highlight of the burger. The patty is about a third of a pound of grass-fed Sunfed Ranch beef, with a slice of milky white Hook’s aged cheddar melted on top. It is rounded out by pickled shallots (allegedly) and a tall, tangled stack of mustard frills.

The server recommended I order the patty cooked medium. That was an error; it was overcooked, dry, and charmless. The patty scarcely deserved the exceptional cheese that was melted on top of it, a truly lovely Hook’s aged white. It was distantly sweet, mild, perfectly melted, and utterly wasted by the lifeless piece of flesh it was meant to complement.

With a better cast around it, this cheese would have been a wonderful final touch. But even ignoring the patty, the rest of the burger is rather a mess. The mustard greens were flaccid, virally overabundant, and bland. The pickled shallots so nearly approached absolute zero on the palate that I actually doubted their existence. The sauces, served on the side, were ketchup (from a bottle) and an almost oppressively banal aioli, which essentially tasted like mayonnaise that had been left sitting out. They weren’t much, but they were just about all I tasted every time I took a bite.

I rarely make overt mention of price unless it is a virtue. In this case, though this is far from an offensive product, it does not even nearly approach being worth $16. This price tag is wholly unjustifiable. I couldn’t help feeling I was paying for the delicious inattention of our server and the string of patio lights more than I was paying for a good meal. I very seldom feel as though I have wasted money eating a burger. This was one such occasion.

This is a burger without personality; it is a lazily conceived pro forma offering that expresses nothing, demands nothing, gives nothing. It smacks of brunch menu tokenism (which is a thing I made up just now, but essentially amounts to the creative minds behind this restaurant saying something like, “Ugh, we probably should put more lunch items on this menu, because otherwise it’ll be all ‘br’ and no ‘unch.'”).

Is this the folly of a young restaurant? Probably not. Most young restaurants err by trying too hard. This just feels lazy. There’s something respectable in a calculated, but ultimately botched, gamble. There is little to respect – let alone consider or discuss – in paint-by-numbers concepts executed poorly.

So try as I might, it’s hard to articulate exactly what I think of it. I just don’t think of it. Nor should you.

The Ratings:
Flavor: 6.10 / 10.00
Freshness/Quality: 8.80 / 10.00
Value: 4.00 / 10.00
Efficiency: 8.80 / 10.00
Creativity/Style: 6.20 / 10.00
Bun: 9.10 / 10.00
Patty: 6.90 / 10.00
Toppings: 6.40 / 10.00
Sauce: 4.80 / 10.00
Balance: 6.30 / 10.00

Total: 67.40 / 100.00

Sunny Spot

August 4, 2016August 4, 2016 ~ prachandrasoma ~ Leave a comment

The 405 freeway is maybe best described as a piece of hell that Los Angeles chose to annex in 1964. It (along with bananas-high taxes) is the price we pay for living in a sun-soaked paradise: a throbbing vein of gridlock, on which – at the best of hours – brake lights pulse rhythmically. Quite often though, it’s worse, and the string of red lights in front of you looks like a fluorescent snake if you squint.

For those who live in Los Angeles, the 405 is a conversation piece. When I meet friends for a meal in Santa Monica or Venice, inevitably I will describe to them either a) what a tragedy the 405 is today, or b) how I skillfully, creatively managed to circumvent the 405. These topics are staples of the conversational diet in this town. And they make us an easy target.

I recently spent a Saturday morning – and part of the afternoon – on the 405, driving to brunch at Sunny Spot. My interminable journey through the gridlock (which, in familiarly epic largesse, spilled indulgently back onto the 101) found me listening to Loveless on repeat and texting my friend Bret with my car in park (and just to completely embody the stereotype, I’ll share that I was between Getty Center and Sunset – nightmare).

Unless you live on the west side, you’ll have to endure some version of this drive to get to Sunny Spot. When you arrive, you’ll find a classically Venice exercise: peeling turquoise paint on which the name of the restaurant boldly is emblazoned in coral-colored cursive (think the colors of the key at the San Antonio Spurs’ arena circa 2000), a meticulously curated shabby-chic beachside dive aesthetic. It tries hard not to try hard.

You’ll likely have lost your reservation by the time you arrive (assuming you had the foresight and misplaced optimism to make one). So you’ll have to wait among aspirant screenwriters and armchair critics; almost impressively basic young women with protein powder-dusted boyfriends following close behind; post-surf stoners, desperately hungry and wondering why they hath forsaken Taco Bell.

It goes without saying that a tiny proportion of guests will be talking to one another. After all, to our generation, a meal with friends merely means sitting at a table with other people who are also glued to their Instagram feed. True to form, you’ll see the patrons of the restaurant being alone together, side-by-side but absorbed in Pokémon Go or composing sarcastic YouTube comments or adding this “memory” to their Snapchat story or whatever the intimacy-killer du jour is.

You’ll try and push this depressing portrait of collaborative loneliness out of your head. You’ll get a greyhound from one of the surprisingly attentive bartenders (you won’t get a Bloody Mary, because they aren’t fantastic here, and you won’t get a mimosa because mimosas are sort of silly). You’ll steep in the charming, faux-rustic atmosphere of the place, the loose and warm summer shade. If you’re the type, you’ll lovingly muss your hair and frame a selfie or two. You’ll wait longer than you should for a table, and do your best not to wonder if it would be easier to get a table at Providence than here. Then you’ll remember that you should relax; it’s the weekend, and the weekend was made for wasting time.

The Order: Double Cheeseburger

The Price: $15

The Burger
The reason I bring up the 405 and the whole look of Sunny Spot is because I have to talk about them to talk about this burger.

The 405 is not just a freeway. Well, on the surface it is. It’s a few lanes arranged in a predetermined path, peppered by ramps every few miles. But dig deeper, think harder, and you might be surprised with what you realize. The 405 forces us to confront the ironic truth that, to get somewhere, we have to accept going nowhere for a while. It wrenches us from the stupefying, swipe-right torrent of instant and meaningless gratification that occupies so much of our time and thought. It pulls us away from the relentlessly interconnected world and makes us confront our own thoughts. It demands the one thing so many in this generation lack: patience.

My point is that the 405 isn’t what it seems on the surface, and if you think about it in the right way, you can understand how sitting in traffic actually is a blessing, an opportunity for growth and reflection that has become vanishingly rare as our world becomes a giant touchscreen. At the very least, it can show you that often times, there’s more to things than what you might see from a cursory look.

Sunny Spot is sort of like the 405 in that way. If you weren’t looking all that hard, you’d see a beachy Venice restaurant with a gregarious color scheme. You might miss the subtleties at play here. Their brunch menu features standard items with haute tweaks. Grana Padano in an otherwise unremarkable chop salad. Crisp chicharron on the Cuban pork sandwich. A sunny egg on the BLTA.

This is a place that quite clearly is trying to give you what you want in a way that’s better than you wanted. They want to blend the familiar with the high-level. It’s not just a beachside shack; it’s a place that is dedicated to the marked – if incremental – heightening of tastes. This is admirable, and an especially tall order when your target audience is so often obsessed with the banal and unchallenging.

What I’m trying to get at here is the (weird, semantic) distinction between being complicated and being complex. The 405 is complicated because it introduces logistical uncertainty in my life. Because there are so many damn cars on it, I’m late for any plans that involve me taking the 405. But the 405 is complex because it makes me feel something every time I’m on it, and exploring those feelings makes me think more deeply and more critically about the world around me and my interaction with it.

Sunny Spot itself is uncomplicated – it’s a simple enough formula of beautiful, precisely disheveled people and a milieu to match; but it’s complex because it seems to be at least attempting to subvert and refine the unsophisticated impulses of the very clientele to which the place – at least aesthetically – caters by subtly altering the familiar.

How does this distinction apply to burgers? Well, it’s easy to make a burger complicated by fettering it with a slew of features. But complexity isn’t about the number of variables in play; it’s about the depth of interaction between those variables, and it’s really about the way the thing makes you feel, what it arouses in you when you take a bite. Sunny Spot rejects being complicated in hopes that it might achieve subtle complexity.

In eschewing all the traditional trappings, Sunny Spot is trying to challenge your preconceptions of what is indispensable on a burger. Lettuce, tomato, ketchup: these are distractions. Sunny Spot presents a burger with a spare flavor profile. By reducing the number of ingredients, the goal seems to be to heighten subtle interactions rather than presenting an amalgam of various flavors.

This burger places two hefty patties smeared with American cheese front and center. This centerpiece is rounded out with dijonnaise, pickles, and caramelized onions, all of which is sandwiched between two brioche buns. Note that this hits every one of the basic taste triggers: sour (pickles), sweet (dijonnaise and onions), bitter (onions), salty (beef), and umami (beef and cheese). This burger touches all the bases without giving too much of anything.

The good news is that this burger is efficiently conceived and executed. It’s a competent exercise in lean construction. But that’s all it is: just craft. This burger clearly wants the diner to do the work of figuring out how these flavors are put together. That doesn’t stop it from being good. But it precludes greatness.

A great burger will give you a window into the mind of the person who made it. It might even arouse memories, feelings, thoughts. It will show you something or make you feel something. The best food isn’t that which you can appreciate as a well-formed study in culinary craft. It’s the food that enriches you somehow, connects with you individually, feels like it was made for you. This burger will mean the same thing to everyone who eats it. Few will abhor it, none will yearn for it once it’s gone. It’s a pleasant, but eminently duplicable, experience. As far as it goes, it’s great. The problem is that it just doesn’t go all that far.

In this case, the distinction between complicated and complex is purely academic. This burger is neither. Relatively few ingredients interact in predictable, uninspired ways. The beef and cheese overwhelm the flavor profile. The brioche is a touch dry. The dijonnaise and pickles are barely perceptible, so any subtle interaction between them is a whisper in a thunderstorm. The onions are unevenly distributed on the patty, providing pockets of soupy bittersweetness. None of this is offensive – in fact, the toppings themselves (especially the dijonnaise, oddly enough) are all quite good – but the ingredients simply stand side by side without ever cohering. This is an orchestra tuning, not playing a symphony: the talent may be there, but the real show hasn’t started yet.

This burger was not made for you. It was made for everyone. It is always correct but never remarkable. It will be good to everyone and great to no one. Fairly, you may not care about the fine-grain distinctions between complicated and complex. In that case, know this: you will neither regret ordering this burger nor crave it again. But it won’t make you feel anything. And it certainly won’t make you forget that drive.

The Ratings
Flavor: 8.20 / 10.00
Freshness/Quality: 9.20 / 10.00
Value: 7.10 / 10.00
Efficiency: 5.20 / 10.00
Creatvity/Style: 7.80 / 10.00
Bun: 7.80 / 10.00
Patty: 8.90 / 10.00
Toppings: 8.70 / 10.00
Sauce: 9.00 / 10.00
Balance: 7.30 / 10.00

Total: 79.20 / 100.00

Belcampo Meat Co. II

June 30, 2016June 30, 2016 ~ prachandrasoma ~ Leave a comment

The Place
Belcampo Meat Co. at Grand Central Market
317 South Broadway
Los Angeles, CA 90013

On some day during your life in Los Angeles, you will experience a moment of being utterly overwhelmed by Grand Central Market. In that ever-trendier, neon-lit, culinary sprawl you will find yourself staring off into space. Your eyes will start to glaze over as you bathe in the crowded fluorescence and the pan-ethnic gamut of scents and the heat of stove and sun. You will equivocate, vacillate, hesitate, and calculate. You will consider – and this time, really consider – whether braving the line at Eggslut is worth it. (Hint: It’s never worth it.) You will think, “If only DTLA Cheese wasn’t out of that burrata toast.” (Hint: They’re always out of the burrata toast). You will quietly entertain the notion that today is the day you put aside your existential objection to vegan ramen (Hint: You’ll never put aside your existential objection to vegan ramen – and that’s okay; Vegan Ramenism is the lone form of bigotry that is socially desirable).

I’ve had a few days like that. On those days, I usually wind up at Belcampo. In the midst of that kind of uncertainty, I take comfort in the fact that even the worst case scenario includes me eating very, very high quality meat. Now, admittedly, I didn’t find myself particularly overwhelmed by Grand Central Market today. I just found myself in the mood for a burger. So I stopped in at Belcampo and ordered the Double Fast Burger.

The Order: Double Fast burger

The Price: $9.00

The Burger
The nice thing about Belcampo, which has shown up on the Project before, is that you can always count on extremely high quality meat. When they tell you that the Fast Burger is their homage to the drive-thru burger, you should only believe them so far. In the main, I can think of no drive-thru slinging burgers made from beef this luxe. More subtly, this burger is not an homage to the drive-thru writ large; it’s an homage to In-N-Out.

Both of my regular readers will know that I am not opposed to doling out high praise to Double-Double rip-offs. But imitating the greatest burger chain on the planet is a high-risk, unforgiving enterprise. And Belcampo’s attempt, while estimable, falls noticeably short in several respects.

In the first place, the patties, while certainly flavorful and of the utmost quality, are not well packed, and too flimsy. They never quite fell apart while I was eating, but threatened to on several occasions. And while it’s admirable to use such excellent meat, Belcampo’s purism means the beef is barely seasoned at all. That, coupled with the fact that this beef actually is just the trimmings of the beef from everything else they use, means you won’t be able to pin down precisely what you’re eating, and it may even vary from bite to bite. One bite may ring out with marbled echoes of Porterhouse, while in the next, gritty chuck will elbow its way to the forefront. The quality of the meat is there, but the initial momentary thrill of variety quickly gives way to frustration at a patty that is unfocused and incoherent.

The toppings, in the aggregate, are fine. Like its cousin the Belcampo Burger, the double fast burger features lettuce that is a bit too wilted and sad not to notice. The tomato does not offend, despite being a bit slippery and lacking in that sunny juiciness that you hope for. The cheese is a standout – housemade American that is creamy and unfussy. It oozes about the patty like sap on a tree stump.

It’s hard to argue this is a better buy than In-N-Out. The beef is the centerpiece of the burger, but the patties are not as carefully composed, and the toppings are nowhere near as fresh-tasting. The bun, too, is a pale imitation of a pale imitation of In-N-Out’s standard setter. The lack of sauce is the final insult: an incomprehensible choice that seriously undermines the balance of the burger (you’ll appreciate In-N-Out’s dressing that much more after eating this).* And at $9.00, while it’s still quite a bargain, it’s vastly more expensive than In-N-Out (or Burgerlords).

It occurs to me that this review reads pretty negatively up to this point. Belcampo does a lot of things right. They offer ingredients-first burgers that don’t attempt to hide behind gimmicky ingredients or high-cuisine shenanigans. To the extent this offering falls flat, it does so relative to its industry-topping comparables, In-N-Out and Burgerlords. In its own right, it’s a good burger. Inconveniently, though, it has some stiff competition, and that’s hard to forget.

It may be that the Fast Burger is the “worst case scenario” for Belcampo to which I alluded above. Indeed, the very concept of a drive-thru inspired burger seems anathema to the Belcampo’s whole schtick. And that’s really the big problem here: Belcampo isn’t a burger stand. It’s not a fast food restaurant. It shouldn’t pretend to be one.

*Because this burger did not have sauce, I haven’t included sauce in my ten-point scale. However, the lack of sauce affects the quality of the burger, which I’ve reflected in a lower score in the Balance rating. The overall score – without the sauce category – is out of 90.00, which I then normalized to 100.00 by doing cross-multiplication. Be impressed.

The Ratings:
Flavor: 8.00 / 10.00
Freshness/Quality: 9.00 / 10.00
Efficiency: 9.00 / 10.00
Value: 9.00 / 10.00
Creativity/Style: 7.50 / 10.00
Bun: 7.20 / 10.00
Patty: 8.10 / 10.00
Toppings: 7.80 / 10.00
Sauce: N/A
Balance: 7.40 / 10.00

Total: 73.00 / 90.00 = 81.11 / 100.00

République

October 13, 2015October 13, 2015 ~ prachandrasoma ~ Leave a comment

The Place
624 S. La Brea Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90036

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

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 Los Angeles Burger Project

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