The Flip Side

There are as many hamburger philosophies as there are relish spoons, but in this burger chain age, the definition is getting to be hamburger as comfort food: soft patty, crumbly bun and lots of sauce, turning into a warm, rich, reassuring mush in your hand. There are holdouts, though, and two are within a mile of each other on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood.

Jimmy’s Burgers is not located in the fashionable part of Lankershim, if there is such a thing. It’s a workaday Formica tabletop short-order place that shares its parking lot with a salon de belleza.

The burger philosophy here is one line of development from what people back East used to call the California hamburger: viz. with lettuce, tomato, onion and pickle. Jimmy’s uses a thin, aggressively charcoaly patty grilled almost crisp. There’s no sauce but mayo, and the shredded lettuce remains unwilted, making for a chaste, almost sweet sort of burger that leaves your palate feeling refreshed, so far as you can say after a burger, that is.

There are scores of other things on the menu: gyros, greasy chili, the usual short-order sandwiches, dinners (steak, fish, shrimp or chicken with fries), about a dozen Mexican dishes and even a soup of the day.

They’re quite respectable. The pastrami sandwich is piled high, deli-style, and meat is moist, peppery and garlicky. The steak in the steak sandwich is paper-thin, as the low price would suggest; with lettuce, tomato and onion, it comes off sort of like a chewier version of the burger. The burritos are huge and loaded with, of course, lettuce, tomato and onion.

Altogether, there are half a dozen burgers on the menu: bigger burgers, burgers with cheese, bacon or avocado. But if it’s vision you want, the plain burger is the way to go.

BE THERE

Jimmy’s Burgers, 7441 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. (818) 764-7528. Open 6 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 7 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday. Takeout. No credit cards. Lunch for two, food only, $3.80-$10.90. What to get: hamburger, pastrami sandwich.

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Seven blocks to the south, Lankershim is wider, busier and a bit dreary. (You know the block if you ever went to the old Palomino nightclub to hear country music.) Sirloin Burger shares its parking lot with an out-of-business adult theater, but it rolls on sturdily, as it has for decades. The wall boasts that 14 million hamburgers have been sold.

There’s a large enclosed dining area, but you rarely see more than one table in use. Most people order takeout at the counter window, where orders have always been tracked by a mysterious system of moving little colored tiles around on a big tiled board.

The burger philosophy is minimalist and emphatically non-Californian. Here again the patty is aggressively charcoaly, but with no lettuce, no tomato, no pickle--nothing but a lick of mayonnaise and a fragrant hash of chopped onions fried quite brown. There are mustard and catsup dispensers if you want to use them, but cognoscenti cut the sweetness of the onions with hot sauce. (Back in the ‘70s, the sauce tasted like Tabasco, but these days it’s clearly a Mexican sauce like Tapatio. No problem.)

The burger may actually be sirloin--I can’t tell--but certainly it’s impressively savory and aromatic. For those who feel the need to turn aside from perfection, there are also larger “tremendous” burgers and burgers with cheese or chili. And there are other menu items, though the list seems to be getting shorter. You can’t get a burrito or a steak sandwich anymore.

Frankly, I can do without the other dishes. The meat in the pastrami sandwich is tasty but a little dry; the fried chicken (to be exact, is a deep-fried chicken) and the Salisbury steak (which is about three regular patties mashed together into a shield of ground meat) are topped with incredibly greasy fries. I’ve never been tempted by the chili dog or the fish or shrimp with fries.

Nor, for years, did I ever bother to order the spaghetti, though the wall also boasts, “We are proud of our meat sauce.” The sauce is mild and very tomatoey with some ground beef in it. On the mushy, overdone pasta, it tastes rather in the Chef Boyardee style.

Somebody must like it, because Sirloin Burger boasts of selling enough spaghetti to go around the world, but in my book the plain burger with onions is what makes this place.

BE THERE

Sirloin Burger, 6733 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. (818) 765-5555. Open 9 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-2 a.m. Saturday, 8 a.m.-11 p.m. Sunday. Takeout. No credit cards. Lunch for two, food only, $3.60-$9. What to get: Hamburger.