The Vitals: the burger:   double cheeseburger with bacon, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle and mayonnaise the bucks: $6.30 the coordinates: Los Angeles, CA

Recently a friend told me that if you do one thing for six years, you will become an expert at doing that thing. Bill Elwell has been making burgers for 50 years. That would make him an expert at cooking burgers eight times over. Do enough digging on the internet about Bill's Hamburgers and you will find that the legend of his burgers are in fact superseded by the legend of the man himself. His salty demeanor, his five marriages, really his age alone allows the Bill's Hamburgers experience to live up to the hype before you even take your first bite. Oh, and wait you will for that first bite. And we, the loyalists and devotees to Bill's Hamburgers, are happy to do so. We gladly wait for one of seven stools to open up so we can wait some more to catch the attention of the person taking orders, so we can really settle in and wait and wait, till Bill Elwell makes us a perfect burger. The burgers are always perfect because of that wait. It's a pace that has been 50 years in the making and it is exactly what makes Bill's Hamburgers a temple for Bang for your Burger Buck.

The Vitals: the burger:  "the blue chip" - a double cheeseburger served up club style with three bun slices, american cheese, house made special sauce, mayonnaise, shredded lettuce, sliced onion and tomato  the other burger: 4 oz chargrilled patty with avocado, bacon, shredded lettuce, pickle and house made thousand island the bucks: $3.92, $6.54 respectively the coordinates: Los Angeles, CA

Maybe you have heard of Blue Chip Stocks. If you haven't, allow me to give you a quick wiki economics 101: Blue Chip stocks represent the companies that are considered to be the most dependable and steadily profitable, they are the ones that keep the ship steady in good times and not so good times. They become the indicators of how the market itself is performing. If they go down, then the whole system is in serious trouble. These companies are often followed as a group, which is called the Dow Jones Industrial Average. If ever there was a burger joint that deserved to be on the Dow Jones Index, well how appropriate that the burger joint should happened to be named "Pete's Blue Chip."

(more…)

The Vitals: the burger: cheddar and oaxacan cheeseburger with fries the bucks: $135 pesos($9.21 at current exchange rate) the coordinates: san jose del cabo, mexico

Food is a pretty big damn deal down in Old Mexico. It's a huge reason why I have traveled there 7 times in the last 8 years. Take in the fact that this is a country of 31 states(32 if you count Mexico City) and you've only just begun to crack the textbook on understanding the foodscape of our great neighbor to the south. And then you have to consider that Mexico City is as global a metropolis as they get; meaning they can rep major cuisines from all over the world and all over Mexico. Despite how much we might misunderstand and misinterpret America's #1 ethnic cuisine, they sure do get us; which is why in tourists havens like Cabo San Lucas, burgers abound. But there are still cardinal eating rules that I follow and as I'm sure you know if you frequent Bang for your Burger Buck, not all burger are created equal. Typically when I'm traveling in foreign lands I try my best to eat as the locals do. Down in Baja that means eating as much seafood as I can get my hands on, from taco stands that cab drivers frequent like Taqueria Rossy, hitting up a random seafood shack for the highly acclaimed live chocolate clam, or venturing down a dirt road that dead ends into a beach to buy a fresh catch of baby yellowfin tuna. But Baja can pull off more than just seafood, case in point: Teo Bar and Grill, where the organic beef being cooked over smoldering mesquite will have you drooling about burgers as much as one of those bowls of stunningly fresh seabass ceviche. (more…)

The Vitals: the burger: double medium with mayo, lettuce, tomato, pickle, onions, relish, and mustard  the bucks: $7.63 the coordinates: tested in Los Angeles, CA (with locations across the country and globe)

Welcome to Bang for your Burger Buck: The Fatburger Edition. Long cherished in Los Angeles, thanks in no small part to Ice Cube's "Today was a Good Day", Fatburger sometimes falls in the shadows of some formidable burger competition like the ever affordable In N Out, or the top shelf concept burger empire, Umami. It's never easy being the middle child I guess, just ask Jan Brady, but believe me when I tell you that there is Bang for your Burger Buck to be had at this middle of the road burger temple. You will have to chart a careful course through a menu riddled with costly add ons like that black vat of tepid chili that seems to be lingering for the late night drunk crowd, confusing size options like XXXL that bring to mind memories of Ice Cube's stint as an Action star more so than the weight of a burger patty, and then there are those legitimately tempting milkshakes. But rest assured, my friends, for I have plotted the perfect course around these tragic topping obstacles and sadly, you will have to get one of those tempting milkshakes on another visit. But it's gonna be ok, because the double medium burger with every house topping delivers real deal Bang for your Burger Buck.

(more…)

The Vitals: the burger: griddled triple cheeseburger with bacon, lettuce and tomato the bucks: $6.80 the coordinates: St. Louis, MO

To dine at Carl's Drive In is as fundamental an American dining experience as having a Nathan's Dog on Coney island, or parking yourself at a roadside stand in Mississippi for some BBQ. The parking lot is studded with soccer moms who have, perhaps under mild duress from their cargo of adolescent athletes, made a pit stop after practice. The customers are as well seasoned as the griddle that churns out the burgers. To sit on one of those ten treasured bar stools in this tiny restaurant is as much an American rite of passage as was passing through Ellis Island in the beginning of the 20th Century. If ever there was a burger stand whose humble and compact interior could draw parallels to Sukiyobashi Jiro, then it truly must be Carl's Drive In, nestled in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri. Yup, I really do love this place and so far all I have brought up is the freakin ambiance.

The Vitals: the burger: 8oz in house ground chuck with cheddar, garlic butter, giardiniera, lettuce, tomato and pickle the other burger: half pound griddled double cheeseburger with bacon, onion, pickle, ketchup and mustard the bucks: $9.50, $9.25 respectively the coordinates: Chicago, Il

We live in a complex world. Sometimes life is not always black and white. I could insert something right here about 50 Shades of Grey but that seems so last year and I don't feel like googling right now. I do feel like making a whole new case for Bang for your Burger Buck; it's called Boom for your Burger Buck. It comes down to asking you for 100-200 more pennies a meal. It means opening doors to new and exciting burgers shops, where carnivore centric craftsmen are tinkering and toiling while keeping their customer's budgets in mind. Like I said the world is a complex place, a good thing that it is filled with burgers with complex tastes. And with that, I take you to the burger scene in Chicago.

(more…)

Upon taking your first step inside Dog Haus Biergarten just off the main drag in Pasadena, you will pretty much get the place in 30 seconds or less. Flat screens playing sports, full bar and a food dude centric menu. What you may not get, at least until you sink your teeth into one of these over the top burgers is that the topping combos actually work together. And considering that some of these topping combos resemble an upper tier meal at KFC for the $7 mark, well, Bang had to make a trip to the 626 . . .

My first successful visit to the Habit was the start of the Teriyaki Burger Movement. Faced with the stark reality that some burger establishments insist on cooking their burgers to the minimum temp of Medium Well . . .  Humanitarian relief efforts in the form of cheese and a few ingredients from the Polynesian cupboard seem wholly necessary. The results? (more…)

The Valley is home to many a random burger dive, some of them, like Bill's of Van Nuys, carry a following and reputation that make them a worthwhile stop. But once upon a time, in the beginning, some brave soul had to conjure up the courage to try the place for the first time thereby unleashing burger glory from a diamond in the rough. Burger Hut was my opportunity to find that anonymous burger joint and plant a flag.

The Los Angeles food scene has evolved much in the last 10 years. We got pizza joints that NYers make plans to visit, gastropubs that are growing on trees and iconic sushi restaurants spawning more iconic sushi restaurants. One aspect of the eating scene here that has been steady eddie has been the promise of shacks serving cheeseburgers and tacos. This meld of fast Mexican and American food was a natural osmosis. The kicker is finding the right mix of the two in a single meal. (more…)