This Is the Best Burger in Los Angeles

Hamburgers, like music, may be grouped into two broad categories: classical and pop. The former, almost Mozartean in simplicity, is made up of bun, burger, bun, the ABA form so beloved by poets and troubadours, perhaps jazzed up by the addition of a condiment or two. In a pop burger, the meat is subsidiary to its context.

A Tommy’s burger is pop, the beef little more than a hearty platform for chili; the thin patties in the Apple Pan/Johnny Rockets model, while delicious, basically provide a savory snap to their lettuce-filled buns. Chain burgers are pop by definition, tawdry pop, even the spare, elegant In & Out burger. So, usually, is any coffee shop version with bacon, guacamole or mayonnaise.

(Certain soul burgers, dressed with collard greens or smothered with onions, transcend the genre in the same way Charlie Parker was able to take a corny old song like “Indiana” and transform it into “Donna Lee.”)

Classical burgers, of course, can be monotonous, the gastronomic equivalent of a two-hour German lieder recital on a hot Sunday afternoon. The classic steakhouse burger, a lump of pink meat surrounded by a half-inch of gray, is a dreary thing, and dry, because all the juices have dripped into the grill. Classic health food burgers, while often very good, tend to be overwhelmed by the seven sprouted grains used to make the bun. The Hard Rock Cafe burgers suffer from that fault, too.

Let’s not even discuss Ye Olde Sir Loine.

Which brings us to the West Beach Cafe, and the best burgers in Los Angeles.

The West Beach, a swank, art-filled restaurant with an awesome Calvados selection, is perhaps not the first place that comes to mind when your thoughts wander toward burgers and fries.

The wine list runs the length of a T. Coraghessan Boyle novel, and dinner entrees read like long, loving shopping lists for foodies going marketing at Irvine Ranch: Santa Barbara shrimp, Roma tomatoes, Parmigano-Reggiano, Umbrian extra-virgin olive oil, elephant garlic--like that. The guy in the corner with the painter’s cap is less likely to paint houses or cars than the kind of stuff that ends up in the Museum of Modern Art. The pastry chefs know their way around a creme brulee.

Yet for all its relentlessly civilized qualities, the West Beach is a man’s restaurant, and along with the Caesar salad and giant martinis, the burgers, served at lunch only, are perfect, as rigorous in their classicism as late Stravinsky, but much easier to swallow.

When ordered rare, the patty, neither too thick nor too thin, spurts like a chicken Kiev when you bite through its thin crust of char. The bun, which seems less baked than designed by I.M. Pei or somebody, is dusted with sesame seeds and follows the first law of bun construction: don’t get in the way of the meat. There is a slight crispness that contrasts with the patty’s yielding fleshiness, and sogs a little as it absorbs the seeping juices.

There is a round of onion, sliced tomato, a wedge of iceberg lettuce, which you may not remember to use until half way through the burger, at the point where it cools and becomes less interesting. There are little ramekins of catsup and spicy mustard and, if you ask for it, “mayo”, which doesn’t belong on a hamburger but goes nicely on the fries. The fries are the famous Mor-Ida brand of frozen potatoes, which West Beach owner Bruce Marder and fellow restaurateur Michael McCarty, who runs Michael’s, prefer to fresh. The fries are cooked in rendered beef suet, which browns them thoroughly and gives them a subtle pan-dripping flavor that goes well with the meat. Most French fries, pure texture, taste only of hot oil and salt. (Across the street at his Mexican restaurant, Rebecca’s, Marder, a purist, does his fries in hog lard instead.)

West Beach Cafe, 60 N. Venice Blvd., (213) 823-5396. Hamburger served at lunch only, $8. Open for lunch Tuesday-Sunday. All major credit cards accepted.