It’s no secret that I have a love of burgers. (See here, here and here)

So when I went to LA for an extended holiday, eating a crapload of burgers was inevitable. I know there are a tonne of other good places which didn’t make it to the list but this was mainly due to time limitations and fear of coming back to Sydney with a few extra chins) but here are the 5 burger places which I loved…

Umami Burger

Original Umami Burger with parmesan crisp, shitake mushroom, roasted tomato, caramelised onions with a thick juicy patty served medium rare.

I went to Umami Burger about 5 times in 6 weeks, which is a pretty solid effort. Umami make kind of fancy burgers known for their mysterious umami master sauce which is infused into the house-ground, hand-formed patty. I first fell in love with their truffle burger with its house-made truffle cheese and truffle glaze, but you could get any of their burgers and be content.

Shout outs to their bun – soft, a little sweet and stamped with a “U” which housed the juicy, juicy burger contents perfectly and the fact you can get my favourite brand of coconut water too.

I went to a few locations, but The Grove’s location was my favourite.

Read my full post here

Umami Burger: multiple locations. See the website for your closest one.

In-N-Out (obviously)

Shut up and give me that $2.25 cheeseburger.

You can’t go to California, be a meat eater and not go to In-N-Out. Well you can, but what kind of life are you living?

The burgers are cheap and good. The paper hats are fun. The secret menu is like whaaaat?! Also Instagramming one of these burgers is an instant Like generator.

Confession: I had a special In-N-Out burger wallpaper on my work computer for months before going to the states just to get excited about putting one of these burgers into my mouth.

Multiple locations. See their website for details.

Apple Pan

The Hickory burger with a red hickory BBQ sauce.

Since 1947 The Apple Pan has been serving up 2 kinds of burgers to LA – the Hickory Burger (which I got) and the Steak Burger. They’ve found a good thing and stuck to it, because from what I hear this recipe hasn’t changed since it opened. Sure, the men who serve you are gruff but then burgers are classically delicious and once you get on the surly waitstaff’s good side, it’s all smiles.

They also sell a number of pies – apple, pecan, banana cream pie if you have enough room for dessert (if not, I suggest you make some room).

10801 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064, United States

Fukuburger

A beast of a burger.

It’s like this place is never open. Turns out they only open on Friday, Saturday and Sunday – which is a pretty sweet deal for them. Not so much for me. But when you have burgers like this maybe you can be like “screw it, we’ll serve you burgers when we feel like it and you’ll deal with it because we’re good.” Or maybe they just know that prime burger eating days are those 3 days (incidentally, my prime burger eating day is all of them).

This place started off as a Vegas food truck and was so popular that they opened a branch in Hollywood. Their burgers have a distinct Japanese flavour which actually works really well with the burger. The tamago (egg) burger was recommended by many so I went with that. It was EPIC. Egg everywhere but damn it was good.

Plus they use the same Japanese character in Fuku that’s in my last name which is an extra win for me.

634 Cahuenga Blvd, Hollywood, CA 90028, United States

Rounds Premium Burgers

My burger (they forgot the avocado in this shot) with the amazing chilli fries in the back.

Rounds Premium Burgers has only been around 2 years and in this short time have opened 5 different locations around LA. I liked it because you can build the burger “just the way you like it”, which in my case means lots of avocado. But you can tailor your burger so it’s big, messy and fatty (if you decide to do so, get the chilli fries too because they are amazing) or you can go bun-less, meatless, cheese-less and have something that barely resembles a burger but whatever, it’s your burger.

I went to the West Hollywood branch, but check their website for other locations.

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