GET WAY OUTTA TOWN
Father's Office - Los Angeles
By Jeannine Sano

The perfect burger. It is as elusive as the Holy Grail. Many have come close — Andie’s Café in Napa, Rosamunde Sausage Grill in the Haight (Tuesdays only), DB Bistro Moderne in Manhattan. (I am not counting Bill “The Kitchenless Cook” Knutson’s one-of-a-kind burgers here because they are not commercially available, much to my chagrin.) But the true Holy Grail apparently resides in Los Angeles — take your pick between it and the one in Santa Monica. The Office Burger at Father’s Office draws lines longer than the latest box office hit. One bite of the dry-aged ground beef dressed with a gooey layer of melted Gruyère and Maytag blue cheese, a sticky-sweet-salty-smoky compote of bacon, onion, and tomato reduced down to a savory sludge, and fresh baby arugula on a chewy French roll, and you will be cursing the fact that you do not live in Los Angeles so that you could fight the traffic and crowds to eat this every night. The juicy beef is good enough to be eaten solo (with a glass of Bordeaux of course), but don’t even try to see what the individual components of this magnificent creation might taste like in a different combination. Chef Sang Yoon is the Los Angeles Burger Nazi — no changes, no substitutions, don’t ask, don’t try, he means it. But hey, why mess with perfection? If you can score a coveted seat at the bar, try the Office Burger along with a cart of matchstick fries and garlic aioli. Yoon prefers beer to wine, but he will allow you to order wine with your burger (and the bartenders know every single wine and beer by sight, smell and sound). Gotta love the crazy, obsessed chefs. They make life worth living and more important, food worth eating.   
        
   Father’s Office: 3229 Helms Ave., Los Angeles; Mon.-Thu. from 5 p.m., Fri.-Sun. from noon; 310-736-2224 & 1018 Montana Ave., Santa Monica; Mon.-Thu. from 5 p.m., Friday from 4 p.m., Sat.-Sun. from noon; 310-398-BEER, www.fathersoffice.com   — J. Sano