Do you remember the best burger you’ve ever had?
No — really think about it. Not the last time you had In-N-Out at 2 a.m., or scarfed down a pricey airport burger after a four-hour flight.
We're talking best ... of the best. Impossibly tender beef. Cheese melting in your mouth. Exquisitely balanced onion-to-tomato ratio. A special sauce, just for good measure.
Here in Los Angeles, we have plenty of great burgers. But you can’t possibly claim you know LA’s best burger.
Unless you’ve tried them all.
That’s what writer, musician, and filmmaker Jeff Alulis sought out to do. Over 100 burgers and eight years later, here’s what he found.
Back in 2014, Alulis and his friend ordered burgers for lunch at Mo Better Burgers on La Brea Avenue. The place has since closed, but he’ll never forget that burger.
“I was like, ‘I think this is the best burger in L.A.’,” he tells LAist. “Well, I can’t really say that unless I’ve tried all the burgers in L.A.”
Well, I can’t really say that unless I’ve tried all the burgers in L.A.
Alulis half-jokingly committed to an elaborate quest to test his hypothesis, not knowing what he was getting himself into.
It seemed simple at first: Eat every burger in L.A. But he quickly realized that would be impossible, so he narrowed it down to 100. Within that, he would eventually select a top 10.
Only, he didn’t know that would take eight years.
If Alulis would do this, he would do it right. For true credibility, he set a series of Burger Quest ground rules:
As he chomped away, Alulis placed burgers in three categories: Finalists, Honorable Mentions, and Not So Much. After that, finalists were re-eaten in an evaluation round.
Alulis and his taste testing team ranked finalists on a 1-5 scale. Results were informally tabulated — and voilà! He had his top-10 list, purposefully unranked to accommodate unique palettes.
Here’s a few highlights:
Say you’re in the mood for something a little high-end. You’ve been working hard this week, and you want to take yourself out for something special.
Alulis would introduce you to Everson Royce Bar’s $11 single burger. Just a patty, tillamook cheddar, and dijonnaise snuggled on a brioche bun.
Our burger expert likens it to a suit made by a British designer.
“It’s very stylish, without being trendy or flashy or ostentatious.”
Maybe pair it with a fancy cocktail, while you’re at it.
A burger is a burger. It’s pretty hard to make it bad. But if you eat them for sport, you’re bound to develop some pet peeves.
Enter: the smash burger.
“You squish the meat and you end up with this very dried out, Saturn ring of meat … that you have to fight your way through before you get to the other toppings,” Alulis says.
You end up with this very dried out, Saturn ring of meat.
But, For The Win’s smash burger surprised him, even making his top 10 list. He says it came down to balance — and lack of a dried meat ring.
(No smash burger fans were harmed in the making of the burger list.)
Alulis was a little skeptical of Alhambra’s Grill ‘Em All, which prides itself on “the most insane and mind-bending burgers in the world.”
For example, the Napalm Death — pickled jalapeño, jalapeño poppers, habanero aioli, sriracha, and more.
But Grill ‘Em All’s mastery of all that chaos is what impressed Alulis.
“When you have grilled cheese sandwiches as buns and garlic aioli this, and caramelized apples, to find a balance in there … seems impossible,” Alulis said. “Somehow they actually managed to do it.”
Check out Alulis' full list, including honorable mentions and what's in the Not So Much category.
As you can imagine, the Burger Quest took Alulis on quite an adventure — both physically and socially. Burger tasting became an avenue to connect with friends, while discovering new pockets of L.A.
From Alhambra, to Watts, to Chinatown, the burgers led and he followed.
“I called them little ‘burger field trips’... where you’d go out and see parts of the city that maybe you would neglect otherwise.”
"You'd go out and see parts of the city that maybe you would neglect otherwise.”
He’ll never forget seeing the Compton Cowboys trot by while he grabbed Mom’s Burgers, or the time he went for an ocean swim with a friend after burger tasting in Venice.
It also gave him and his friends something to bond over. Instead of aimlessly eating, they could now argue over the tastiness of each bite.
“You’d have this little moment of evaluating it. You’d critique it together, and go in with a little mission … makes it a little more fun.”
Along the way, Alulis learned to appreciate the true artistic expression of a good burger.
“A burger is just a few basic ingredients — bun, meat, cheese, toppings. But there’s infinite new variations and combinations … the simplest food can be extremely complex and rewarding that way.”
"A burger is just a few basic ingredients - bun, meat, cheese, toppings. But there’s infinite new variations and combinations."
He encourages others to go on quests of their own — for sushi, tacos, donuts, or otherwise. Just let him (and us) know what you find.
