421 West 8th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90014
It was another wild Saturday night up in Burbank with Katie's family. Since we knew it would be a late night, we were lucky enough to snag a hotel room, so we didn't have to drive back to OC at a late hour. It also gave us a chance to wake up fresh for the long trip back to OC. Not wanting to let this opportunity go to waste, it was also a chance for me to cross another LA restaurant off of my restaurant wishlist. I knew just the place, the fabled Cassell's.
Cassell's made my list because it's pretty legendary. It's been around since 1948, with only a brief closure of two years between 2012 and 2014. Al Cassell opened his lunch counter at the corner of 6th and Berendo, serving up what many people called the best burger in LA at the time. He ground his beef daily, used quality ingredients, and made as much from scratch as possible, including his mayo, potato salad, and pies. After 40-plus years in business, Al sold, and his place stayed open for a while but ultimately closed.
Enter Chef Partner Christian Page and Jingbo Lou, an architect who had recently bought and begun renovating the Normandie Hotel, a mere five blocks from the original Cassell's. Lou felt this hamburger concept would be perfect for the ground floor of his hotel project. Chef Page had worked at Short Order at the Original Farmer's Market. Page and Lou felt protective of Cassell's concept because they bought all the old recipes, retained the signage, and even kept the old meat grinder from the original location.
People must really enjoy the revamped Cassell's. They have four-star ratings on Yelp and added another location, the one we visited, in Downtown LA near the corner of Olive and 8th. It's a bi-level restaurant with a fifties vibe going for it but without the over-the-top kitsch of a Ruby's or Johnny Rockets. The menu is expanded with burgers, melts, sandwiches, sides, desserts, and even breakfast offered. Even though he was mistaken, our good friend Ed found his way to meet us and went first to the Hotel Normandie location. So, let's see if Cassell's is still one of the best burgers in LA.
Katie is definitely a breakfast person, which is funny because she's asleep almost all the hours when breakfast is served. She's lucky that Cassell's serves breakfast all day, so she could try this Breakfast Burger ($16.50 plus $2.50 for bacon). This unique burger had two crispy hashbrown patties substituted for the bun, with a fried egg, some avocado, and cheddar cheese blanketing the hamburger patty. I'm still determining how most people eat this, but Katie mashed it up and ate it with a fork. It would be too messy to be eaten with your hands. Nevertheless, she enjoyed this and thought it would be greasier than it actually was.
I also ordered this 1/3 Pound Cheeseburger and Macaroni Salad ($15.50 plus $3.25 for the Mac Salad) for research purposes. The burger was like a smash burger, with its crispy outer crust and more substantial middle area. The lettuce, tomato, and onion, along with the condiments, are served on the side. I really enjoyed the way the cheddar cheese melted over the patty. I suspect it was Tillamook cheese, but I could be mistaken. This burger came with a very well-made Thousand Island dressing, but I should have experimented with the other seven sauces they offer. Again, it was a very clean and tasty burger, but the bun-to-meat ratio was a little off. The bun overwhelmed in most bites. The macaroni salad was good, with a thick mayo-based dressing covering the macaroni and some diced red peppers and olives. I should have gotten the potato salad, which seems more popular online.
As you can tell from the above, Ed is much more health-conscious than Katie and I are. He went with the Chicken Sando ($13.25) and a Market Salad ($10). At Cassell's, they use Naked Truth organic chicken breast and add cheddar cheese, plenty of lettuce, tomato, and ranch to complete the sandwich. Ed's not one to express his views on food, but he enjoyed his sandwich. His salad contained mixed greens, celery, cherry tomatoes, onion, and ranch dressing. A basic but fresh salad.
I had read somewhere that Cassell's had some pretty good pie baked daily on the premises, so we all split a slice of Apple Pie Ala Mode ($9.50). They used the traditional granny smith apples mixed with cinnamon sugar and a caramel streusel sprinkled on top. The pie was good, but I liked the one from Pie 'N Burger better. This one was way better than the one we had at The Apple Pan a few years ago. They also get bonus points for serving Fosselman's ice cream.
The folks behind Cassell's revival have done things right. I got the sense that they have taken great care in preserving the heritage of what Al Cassell had built. The quality of the food and the way they make things from scratch while expanding their menu to cater to the tastes of the modern consumer is reason enough to visit. I'm sure a good number of you are looking at their prices and thinking they are way too high, as I was walking out of here $72 poorer. Still, this is a great place to get one of the best patty melts in LA and a nice treat when you just got paid.
Out of five speeding tickets (because 1948 was not only the year that Cassell's opened, but also when Porsche was founded, and I'm sure drivers of those sportscars have gotten their share of speeding tickets), five being best to zero being worst, Cassell's gets 3.5 speeding tickets.
For more information about Cassell's, head to their website by clicking here: https://www.cassellshamburgers.com/
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