San Diego’s Best Burger: Burger Lounge Review

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Fun Diego Family is always looking for a great burger.  Luckily, San Diego has many great options.  For many years Burger Lounge has been at the top of our list.  Burger Lounge is a small, but rapidly growing chain.  This is our Burger Lounge review.

The original Burger Lounge opened in La Jolla in 2007.  We have been visitors to this location from day one.  Since that time, we have watched it expand all over San Diego and now into other parts of California and even Las Vegas.

There are many locations but the La Jolla one is our nostalgic favorite.

WEBSITE: Burger Lounge Official Site

As of late 2018, Burger Lounge has 25 locations.  Nine of these locations are in the San Diego area.  Most of the others are in the Los Angeles area.  There are 2 in the Bay Area, 2 in Sacramento and one in the Aria Resort in Las Vegas.

UPDATE 2020: Burger Lounge is down to 23 locations.  The downtown San Diego closed during the COVID shutdown.

Right off the bat, we must mention our concern when one of our small local favorites grows so fast.    We have visited 6 of the San Diego locations.  Overall, the other locations do not rank quite as high as memories of our visits in the early days.  However, this is to be expected as a place like this goes mass market.  Also, I admit our early memories may be more based on nostalgia.

Right now, the big competition with Burger Lounge is Shake Shack.  In an earlier post, we wrote about the competition between Shake Shack and In-N-Out.  Our conclusion was that this was not really a far comparison.  However, Shake Shack and Burger Lounge are definite competitors.

As we noted, In-N-Out is a traditional fast food restaurant competing with McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s etc.  Burger Lounge and Shake Shack are more premium experiences.  The prices are significantly higher, and one should expect the quality should match.  They are both casual restaurants targeting the trend towards more organic ingredients.

The good news is that across the board Burger Lounge is preferred by us over Shake Shack.  We will visit In-N-Out probably five times as often, but that is only because of price.  Right now, Burger Lounge is our go-to over Shake Shack.

The fries are the first thing that stands far above Shake Shack (and in my opinion In-N-Out).  That being said, we also like the hamburgers at Burger Lounge.  The shakes are pretty good.  However, I will admit we are not heavily focused on milkshakes.  Shake Shack has more choices for flavors, while Burger Lounge is pretty much limited to vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry.

Like Shake Shack, Burger Lounge has a range of menu items beyond hamburgers.  This includes chicken and fish sandwiches as well as turkey and veggie burgers.  There are also salads.  For us, we only go here for the two main burgers, the Classic and the Lounge Burger.

Both the Classic and Lounge Burgers come in either ¼ lb. or 1/3 lb. sizes.  The ¼ lb. is $6.96, the 1/3 lb. is $7.95.  Meals are $12.95/$13.95.  Meals include either fries or a salad plus a non-alcoholic beverage.  You can upgrade to onion rings for a $1 more.

The beverage choices include Craft fountain soda, Mexican Coke, Tea, and the Burger Lounge house-made lemonade.  Our daughter begs to go here just for the lemonade.  It comes in either hibiscus or lavender-mint.

The Classic burger has American Cheese, ketchup, mustard, chopped onion, and pickles.  This is my personal go-to.  The rest of my family is partial to the Lounge burger.  This is American cheese, fresh or grilled onion, lettuce, tomatoes, pickle, and 1000 Island.  You can also do a double Lounge burger, the Husky.  It is two ¼ pound patties at $10.95 ($16.95 for a meal).

Burger Lounge is not cheap, but it is a high-end grass-fed burger.  They are competing in an area where burger prices are pushing the $20 market.  The burger is basic with the only add-ons of note being bacon and avocado at $1.95 each.

We first went to Burger Lounge about the same time we went to a similar small chain in Los Angeles, Umami Burger.  Our opinion at the time was that Umami Burger was more expensive and tried to do too much.  We have only been to 2 Umami Burger locations and have not been back in several years.  However, a quick glance at the menu shows they have added all kinds of crazy burgers.  Prices seem to be significantly higher than Burger Lounge.

I mention this only because it appears that Burger Lounge is expanding into Umami’s Los Angeles home territory.  In San Diego, the main competition is probably with Shake Shack.  Fun Diego Family has a clear preference for Burger Lounge, the hometown contender.

UPDATE: Burger Lounge made our San Diego’s Top 10 Burger list

Go here for more of Fun Diego Family’s best burgers in San Diego.

San Diego’s Top 10 Burgers

Fun Diego Family has been on the search for the best burger in San Diego.  We are just getting started but we have our initial list that will be updating regularly.  So as of June 2019, here are San Diego’s Top 10 Burgers. Overview Our list is in alphabetical order.  We had enough trouble deciding […]

Also check out our look at Shake Shack vs In-N-Out.  We think Burger Lounge is San Diego’s answer to Shake Shack

San Diego’s Best Burgers: In-N-Out Vs Shake Shack

In-N-Out reigns supreme as the king of fast food burgers in Southern California.  However, on the East Coast Shake Shack has been getting almost as much praise in recent years.  Now Shake Shack is coming to San Diego.  Fun Diego Family has decided to address the question who wins in the battle of In-N-Out vs […]

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