My friend Dan sent me a link to Men's Health Magazine which featured an article entitled "America's Eight Greatest Guy Foods." I have to admit to never reading Men's Health Magazine. That's not a slam, it's just that I barely even get my nose in the journals I should be reading. At the same time I'm not a huge fan of "the best," "the greatest," or even "top ten" ratings. In my experience they are usually commercially linked to the entities included and I usually think they're wrong to boot.
Not so this latest article. Just because he's wrong about at least 5 of the 8 entries doesn't disqualify the author's opinion when it comes to hamburgers. As he describes in his piece, when you sit down to a juicy hickory cheese burger at the Apple Pan, all other hamburger experiences fall to the wayside. Actually, it happens even before you sit down.
Walking up to the Apple Pan is like approaching a Disney landscape: the perfectly proportioned, unassuming white sided house with the double wooden screen doors. It looks like something out of the 1940's and that's because it is. When you step in you take a glance, figure your place in the lineup, and wait for your seat to open on one of the 26 red top stools that have supported some of the finest, and happiest, tushies in the City of Angels since 1947.
As with any great restaurant memory, much of it is owed the circumstances surrounding the experience; the friends you met, the staff you liked, the comfort of the surroundings. When it comes to the Apple Pan I can check all those boxes in addition to the one adjoining the comment "best hamburger." I haven't been eating meat for the past year or so but I reserve a spot in my cheating heart for these. No steer lays down his life for any higher purpose.
Make mine a hick-cheese, well-done fries, and a Coke. Oh, ya, and a slice of chocolate cream pie.
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