IN PURSUIT OF THE PERFECT BURGER

The sign in front of McDonald’s says 50 billion served (I’ve had three) and there’s a hamburger joint on every block in town. But where’s the best one? And what does that mean? What I’ve discovered, looking for the answers to these questions, is that a good burger seems mainly a matter of concept.

One person will say the perfect burger is at the Apple Pan, which means a thin-pressed patty grilled nicely to order, loaded with special sauce and mayonnaise, slapped into a toasted bun with some lettuce, tomato and onion, then handed over wrapped in paper--tasty fast food, maybe, but the perfect burger?

Someone else says Cassel’s, but isn’t it the all-you-can-eat potato salad spiked with horseradish and the other freebies in the salad bar they like? It couldn’t be those tasteless, oversized buns (well, at least the buns can contain all the giveaway garnish) or the beef itself.

Better these people should go to Beverly Hills to Burger Hills on Canon, a Cassel’s clone that improves on the original--the same type of potato salad and homemade lemonade, the same hamburger grease from the griddle hanging in the air, but better meat, tastier rolls. Still, who can stand the constant high-volume interruption of the loudspeaker calling out someone else’s number?

“There isn’t a great hamburger in L.A.,” says my friend Jerry, a man who gives the word persnickety new meaning. He takes me to the Beverly Hills Hotel Coffee Shop for what he considers the closest thing there is, and I learn his definition of a hamburger--one that’s cooked on a griddle, a small, handmade patty of good beef (but not as good as it used to be, Jerry insists) on a nice toasted bun. But $6.75 for a coffee-shop burger?

The Times’ Orange County restaurant reviewer, Charles Perry, thinks that atmosphere is all, and favors the burgers at Ruby’s on the Balboa Pier overlooking the sea. He loves, too, the taste of griddle grease on the burger buns and the specially made burger buns themselves that fall apart in your hands--essential to the fast-food burger experience, he says.

There are others who go for burgers loaded with stuff that doesn’t belong there, such as those who rave about the Rolls-Royce Burger at Kathy Gallagher’s--an overwrought contraption of hamburger patty, chili, bacon, cheese and heaven knows what else. And Margy, who goes for the decent little charbroiled chili burgers at the Hard Rock Cafe. And Joel, an otherwise normal person who, the other night at Hampton’s, ordered a burger with bacon and blue cheese dressing (it looked like a hot fudge sundae in reverse) and then proceeded to eat the thing, bun and all, with a knife and fork!

I think that all of these people are crazy. A great burger is a simple thing: charbroiled, bun, slice of tomato and onion, a lettuce leaf. And, of course, catsup. But where to find a great one? The burgers at Hamburger Hamlet, the Ginger Man (once you remove the jumble of deep-fried onion rings) and Hampton’s are reasonable facsimiles thereof, but the meat is mushy and flavorless. It may look like hamburger and it may be cooked the way you like it, but when you bite into it, there’s no resistance--it’s as if you wouldn’t even need teeth to eat it--and there may be some charbroiled flavor, but otherwise it’s like someone took balsa and painted it to look like pink ground beef.

There is, however, one very good, nearly perfect burger just where you’d think it might be--in the wood-paneled men’s club atmosphere of the Grill in Beverly Hills. For $6.50, at lunch and after 10 p.m. only, a pro of a waiter brings you a charbroiled burger, done just right (the rare side of medium rare--charred on the outside, red on the inside, like a good steak). There’s nothing else on the plate but a quarter pickle, a black olive, a slice of tomato and onion, a bit of lettuce and the bun and burger themselves, the whole thing so big and fat once you put it together that you’ve got to work to get your mouth around it, so juicy the stuff runs down your fingers. The meat is really good--maybe too good--USDA Prime East Coast beef (sirloin trimmings, top round, whatever’s in the kitchen) ground daily. I’d prefer a less serious mix, maybe a fattier grade--but so far, it’s the best hamburger in town.

The Grill, 9560 Dayton Way, Beverly Hills. (213) 276-0615. Reservations necessary. 11:30 a.m.-midnight, Monday s through Saturday s . Closed Sundays. Full bar. Credit cards. Hamburgers: $6.50.