After my team posted a huge victory in our rec basketball league, we decided to grab some burgers to celebrate. This led me to San Francisco Saloon, which is not located in San Francisco at all, but rather in West LA and has been serving LA since 1934. The place is more sport bar than saloon and actually has a good sports bar vibe. The burgers are named for LA and San Francisco sports teams like the Giants and the Trojan, with a few non-sports names like Hickory to join them.
Of these, I liked the looks of the Bruin the best. I’m not sure why this was chosen to represent UCLA, but it came with avocado, bacon and jack cheese. All burgers came with lettuce and tomato, so I ordered mine without such things and then chose fries from my side choices. Then, since they asked, I ordered it medium rare.
What arrived looked like a sports bar burger should. The bun was topped with sesame seeds and a toothpick impaled each half of the pre-halved burger. Bacon and cheese protruded beyond the confines of patty and bun, waiting for my attack.
I was a little sad to find the burger cooked pretty thoroughly throughout. Typically, I would not have cared about this at a sports bar, but usually a sports bar doesn’t ask me how I want a burger cooked. As far as taste went, that was pretty much the only thing to complain about. Everything else was spot on, with the bacon being the real highlight of the meal. The fries were a good side, but nothing overly impressive. If there was anything to complain about aside from the fully browned burger, it would be the price. It isn’t terrible by LA standards, but its also priced at the gourmet burger level rather than its actual sports bar level.
I guess basically, San Francisco Saloon, don’t try to make your burgers into something they aren’t. Your bar and burgers remind me of great sports bars I’ve been to in other places, but they don’t try to dress things up to be bigger than themselves. Now that I’ve been I know what to expect. But for unsuspecting patrons like I once was, I want a bit more of “what you see is what you get.”
