American
Burgers at The Counter
On the Westside, there are a handful of burger joints that people swear allegiance to. Apple Pan with its metered ketchup and grumpy servers, Father’s Office with its single burger option and then there is The Counter, which prides itself on offering thousands of burger combinations and plenty of ketchup, bbq sauce, or whatever other toppings you want.
The Counter is consistently packed, and wating twenty minutes or more is not unusual. On the plus side, the friendly servers come around and take beer, wine and drink orders while you are waiting for your table. You can get to work on your order while you are waiting too. Each diner gets a slip of paper with all of the burger options and toppings on it. You check the box next to each option you want. For a full list of options, see their online menu.
50-50
We like to start with the 50-50. It’s a basket half filled with french fries and half filled with onion straws. It comes with one side of BBQ sauce and one side of ranch dressing in addition to the ketchup on the table.
Turkey Burger
I like the turkey burger, with gruyere or horseradish cheddar, topped with onions, tomatoes, roasted chilis and a host of other goodies. Their sweet BBQ sauce is a nice addition as well.
Veggie Burger
The Counter also offers veggie burgers and my wife loves them. They are thick and meaty (meatless) and packed with flavor.
The burgers are offered in 1/3, 2/3 and 1 pound versions. Even the 1/3 lb burgers are sizeable. After you are seated, the burgers come up fairly quick. I think that it has to do with the efficient ordering system and while there are tons of different options, they are pretty easy for the cooks to apply.
We have also had the burgers to go when we can’t hold out for a table.
The Counter
2901 Ocean Park Blvd
Santa Monica, CA 90405
310.399.8383
By Jonah (see more of his posts). Jonah is the founder of la.foodblogging and also created Digesty, a food blog aggregator and Cheww.com, a spam free foodblog search engine.
Discussion
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We are going there for lunch today. This place seems like it needs an independent review.
Note: first comment, long time reader, love the site, love the food. We did Ford’s last weekend, Sooooo Good.
Thanks for the comment Brad, glad that you have found some useful stuff around here. Check back and let us know how your experience at The Counter goes. If lunches are like dinners, get there early! (also, give us some details on your own burger creation there).
The Counter
The Counter serves up giant gourmet burgers at a reasonable price. It can be hard to find a place it sit but it’s worth the wait. Apon arrival you should get in the order line as fast as possible. Just like California Chicken Cafe you order first then find your own table. If you have a party larger than two it helps to send some of them off to scout for tables of people finishing up. Ordering a starter is recommended as it takes time to custom make each burger. We did the 50/50, half fried onion strings and half fries, I would recommend you get the Sweet Potato fries, we tried both and the Sweet Potato won out. You order your burger by filling out a Burger form on these little clipboards. It makes it very easy and all four of our complex custom burgers came out perfect. I ordered a 1/3 lb Beef Burger with Imported Swiss Cheese, Grilled Onions, Grilled Pineapple, Roasted Corn & Black Bean Salsa toped with Roasted Garlic Aioli Sauce on a Honey Wheat Bun. Yes there are pictures. Between the four of us we managed to cover a lot of ground on the burger menu. The premium toppings are $1 and arrive in very health amounts. The Avocado was just ripe enough, the Honey Cured Bacon crisp but not charred, and the Onion Strings where fried to a perfect golden yellow. These where great burgers. They come with a steak knife and you are going to need it. I managed to get the first bite in traditionally before having to chop it up. The only thing I would not get again would be the Roasted Corn & Black Bean Salsa as it soaked into the bun and caused structural problems. Everyone cleaned there plate off, the best compliment a restaurant can get from us. It has earned a rightful place in the lunch rotation. It cost us $12 a head for food, soda, and tip. It was well worth it.
Counter Burger (the one with the fried onion strings) Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm….drool.
Holy Christ! Was that veggie burger a salad with a bun thrown on top? Is there a veggie patty somewhere underneath that mountain of stuff? Good God, I’ve never seen a burger piled up like that. It’s like Cheech and Chong went crazy on the topping bar! That’s f’ing hilarious!
The veggie patty is on top, under the carmelized oinions. The burgers are huge and require some cutting (as Brad mentioned).
Definitely suggest to anyone eating at the Counter to avoid any kind of high-water content toppings if you want an actual burger. Most of the time, I end up needing a fork or going medieval by using my fingers to end the “burger.” This is by no means a bad thing, but just a word of caution.
I’m used to Whopper deconstruction. The further I get into the burger, the more stuff I have to pull off of the increasingly waterlogged bun.
The 50/50 is awesome. I thought the burgers were solid, but not spectacular. The buns didn’t stand up to the meat. Overall, I still prefer Islands and In-N-Out burgers.
The people behinds the scenes of this operation are exceedingly rude and facetious. I was looking forward to trying one of their burgers, but now I am not so sure, thanks to the heavy dose of attitude and lack of co-operation.
I think I’ll stick with Father’s Office when I get the occassional craving for a gourmet burger. Love the sweet potato fries that come in a tiny shopping cart there!
Or an In-n-Out burger, protein-style with grilled onions — messy but delicious and not overpriced.