Last year, the chef Jeremy Fox started developing a recipe for a cheeseburger at his Santa Monica restaurant Birdie G’s. It affected him in strange ways.
“For the last more-than-a-decade, any mention of a burger was extremely triggering for me,” he wrote on Instagram, because it brought back memories of customers storming out of his other restaurant, Rustic Canyon.
There, “my marching orders were to get rid of the burger,” he said. “So people would actually order the farmers’ market dishes.”
For a decade, Santa Monica had been divided between two beloved burgers: the Father’s Office (Gruyère, caramelized onions, arugula, aioli) and the Rustic Canyon (Cheddar, pickles, onion fondue, herb rémoulade) created by the previous chef, Evan Funke.
An early prototype of Mr. Fox’s cheeseburger plate at Birdie G’s, with aioli on the side. The flag tells diners that the beef is raised in California. Credit…Michelle Groskopf for The New York Times
But the drippy deliciousness of the Rustic Canyon burger had become an existential threat to the restaurant. Of 180 diners per night, said Mr. Fox, 75 to 80 would reliably order the burger, which was priced under $20. It generated little profit, and a lot of work, and the owners wanted it gone.
