Best of L.A.: Burgers

—Noah Galuten

BEST PUG AND AWE BURGER

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Howard's Famous Bacon & Avocado Burgers

11127 Venice Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90034

Category: Restaurant > American

Region: West L.A.

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Simmzy's

229 Manhattan Beach Blvd.
Manhattan Beach, CA 90266

Category: Bars/Clubs

Region: South Bay

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More About

• Noah Galuten
• Brooklyn (New York City)
• Sasa Stankovic
• Food and Cooking
• Eating Out

What the pug burger at Hungry Cat lacks in structural integrity it more than makes up in sheer awesomeness, both of size and flavor. In fact, the glory of the pug is that it manages to be one of L.A.’s best burgers despite the point deduction for ridiculousness. It’s a big fucker, maybe only consumable in the traditional way by John Madden, Steven Tyler or Sandra Bernhard. The rest of us have to concede, remove the top bun for later and eat the organic Niman Ranch ground beef, house-smoked bacon, avocado and Danish bleu cheese with a knife and fork like a little baby. More advisable, of course, is to manhandle the thing into your mouth while your friends look on in horror. If you squeeze it, the bacon will grind its way into the meat, the avocado will smush, and the muscular, no-bullshit bleu will spackle the very essence of the Pug. You will get cheese and grease all over your face. Keep going, sexy, you haven’t even noticed the grilled brioche, a sturdy roll strong enough to contain the carnage. The pug burger comes with a pile of fries that you could share with your friends, but won’t. 1535 Vine St., Hlywd. (323) 462-2155, thehungrycat.com.

—Randall Roberts

BEST NONSERBIAN TURKEY BURGER

With a great menu of Serbian food, why talk about Metro Café’s turkey burger? Because when you don’t feel like the awesome Serbian salad (sometimes with my own twist, ahi tuna), or the white-bean-and-ham soup (from proprietor Sasa Stankovic’s mother’s recipe), or the zucchini pancakes or goulash or chevapchichi, and you just feel like some comfort food, you should go for the turkey burger. It may not be making the rounds of the food blogs, and it’s neither as exciting nor as rich as the big Ron (bacon-and-bleu-cheese) burger, but there’s just something about it: a good-sized patty of turkey mixed with onion and garlic powders, finely ground walnuts, olive oil and bread crumbs, topped with Stankovic’s roasted bell pepper aoli. Add a slice of onion and tomato, some lettuce and a side of fries (the sweet potato version are great, but the plain are good, too), and you get what you need: a simple, dependable pleasure. Tomorrow you can order something more interesting, more international, but today you’ll leave satisfied and oh so American. As in fat and happy. 11188 Washington Place, Culver City. (310) 559-6821, metrocafela.com.

—Tom Christie