Here’s the Beef (Again) : Hamburger Joint’s Owners Use Food Truck to Dish Up Treats After Fire Shuts Stand

Like a greasy phoenix rising from the ashes, Meaty Meat Burgers has reopened for business.

The hamburger stand lost its home last month, when a late-night fire consumed the tin-and-wood roof and walls of the former bus shelter at the corner of Pico Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue.

“Don’t Panic, We Will Be Back in two or three Weeks,” said a sign painted on the wall of the eatery, which is as well known for its jaunty name and bilious green paint job as it is for its highly spiced hamburgers.

But after taking a week off, the owners rented a caterer’s truck and went back to dishing out their simple fare--single or double burgers with bacon, egg, chile or cheese, on three sizes of bun with “mayo,” mustard, onion, pickle, tomato and lettuce.

“We want to keep our customers coming back and happy while we build,” said Sharon Rector, daughter of owner Delphinia Langford, who opened Meaty Meat Burgers 11 years ago.

Five family members and two long-time employees have been working there ever since, serving a clientele who come on foot, by bus and in vehicles ranging from rusty jalopies to gleaming Mercedes-Benzes.

“The only thing special is it’s cooked with love,” Rector said. “It’s just a good home hamburger, that’s all.”

The cramped outdoor seating area with its 12 red-topped stools--now closed off because of the fire--was an informal place where strangers found it easy to chat, customer Kimberly Garland said.

“This is a good place to come after an all-night party,” she said. “There’s something about a Meaty Meat Burger. It sort of absorbs the alcohol.”

Jay Malter, who said he has been a customer about once a week for five years, said he found the thick patty to be “just like what hamburgers used to be when we were kids, before McDonald’s and plastic came out.”

An architect is drawing up plans for the new Meaty Meat, Rector said, but the family wants it to keep its homey look. “We feel it’s a landmark,” she said.

The early-morning fire, the origin of which is still undetermined, left the outdoor dining area untouched and only charred the iron grill and cooktop where as many as 400 patties a day would sizzle.

But the bright green paint scheme, which includes a wall painting of a cheeseburger against a mountain landscape, may have to go. “We just don’t know about that,” she said.

In May, Meaty Meat’s hamburger was rated “best in Los Angeles” by a Times reviewer, who praised it as a “people’s burger--fatty, peppery meat . . . all the works and not much money . . . “

Not everyone sees it that way, of course. The reviewer “must have been hallucinating,” a reader wrote, calling it “a lousy $4 meal.”