Anger Burger

Other burgers exist elsewhere in the world, but no other city did for the hamburger what L.A. did.   The burger is an Angeleno, and we’ll cut a bitch who says otherwise.

In my lap, driving home in a thunderstorm.

L.A.’s transformation of the burger was magnificent and total; a crude nosh for the poor reborn, in classic Hollywood style, into a necessity for the hip and trendy.  All the irritation of today’s L.A. over the scenester nature of Kogi-mania already happened double-fold in the burger-joint car culture of the 40′s and 50′s.

Tommy’s cheese is under the chili, god bless them.

And I’m profoundly disinterested in getting into a Best Burger debate — I think it’s a shame that anything topped with arugula or roasted red pepper coulis is lumped in with actual hamburgers, which means about 50% of you are now challenged to fight me.

Try to ignore what the chili does to the paper boat.

Burgers are for picking at in the late summer sun, or gulped down drunkenly in a car while your sober driver looks on in awe and disgust.  I think that straying from that original soul of the burger is disrespectful – this is fried meat held between two pieces of bread so that you can eat it with your hands.

Though, the eating with your hand part becomes a bit of a joke when eating a Tommy’s burger.   At Tommy’s, when you order a cheeseburger you get what you’re looking at above.  A massive splat of super-thick chili paste — much more condiment than soup — over a thin, griddled burger with tomato, pickles, onion and mustard on a contradictorily tender and sturdy bun.

Unless you have Crohn’s disease, in which case your tomato-less burger gets the red badge of shame.

And when they say the chili is thick, they mean it.  It sort of turns my stomach to think of eating this stuff on its own, though such activity is encouraged by the signage begging you to take home a pint.  It’s made with roux, so the longer it sits the more it forms into shapes architecturally disturbing for chili.

Don’t let any of this dissuade you.  Tommy’s has the potential, on any given day, to be a perfect burger.  The chili is mild (oft misreported as bland) and not as Greek as I expected given Tommy’s heritage (see: Cincinnati chili), but the ratios are golden.  As with almost every burger I’ve ever met, a double would be pushing it too far, though I understand that many people have the palate of a toddler and can eat piles of unseasoned ground beef without complaint.

Ultimately, Tommy’s is but one God residing in the burger Olympus that is Los Angeles.  It just happens to be Zeus.