Burger Crew meeting called to order on Saturday, September 25, 2021.
Members in attendance: Angela, DK, Sumana, Trevor, and Wayne, with special guest Will.
After way too much procrastination on my part, I’m finally resuming the Best of LA reviews. Plan Check has always been in the upper tier of Burger Crew favorites, and we were happy in the past to see them expand to multiple locations, but all of the other locations have now closed and their original location on Sawtelle is the only one that remains.
I. Ordering
Plan Check’s menu hadn’t really changed all that much until relatively recently, where they added a lot of new items. Most of the Crew stuck with tried and true mainstays while Sumana and I decided to try something new. All burgers came with regular fries, except for DK substituting sweet potato fries.
Angela: PCB (Plan Check Burger; beef patty, Americanized dashi cheese, ketchup leather, shmaltz onions, mixed pickles, crunch bun)
Trevor: Chef’s Favorite Burger (beef patty, cheese two ways, bacon two ways, ketchup leather, sunny fried egg, hot sauce, crunch bun)
DK: Chef’s Favorite Burger with sweet potato fries
Sumana/Will: Machismo Burger (beef patty, habanero cheese, bacon, fried onions, spicy mayo, jalapeños, crunch bun)
Wayne: So Cal Dbl Cheeseburger (two smash patties, Americanized dashi cheese, lettuce, tomato, bacon 1000 island, crunch bun)
II. The Burgers
As mentioned above, more than half the Crew ordered burgers that they had already had and enjoyed before. However, Angela was very quick to say that she didn’t enjoy her PCB as much as she had in the past and said that while the burger was very well-composed, the meat didn’t taste as meaty and didn’t come with as good of a sear as she had come to expect from Plan Check. A part of her patty also had what she assumed was a piece of tendon and to her it’s a sign that the quality of their meat isn’t as high as it used to be.
For the Chef’s Favorite burgers, Trevor said that he thoroughly enjoyed everything about it, and DK likened his experience eating the Chef’s Favorite to the scene in Ratatouille where the food critic takes a bite and the food causes him to experience a flashback to a happier time, saying that he’s not sure that he’ll ever get another burger at Plan Check because it’s so consistently good.
One thing that the group noticed though was that the fried eggs weren’t as runny was they used to be; whereas before your hands would end up completely covered in egg yolk, the eating experience was far cleaner this time.
Moving on to the new burgers, Sumana really enjoyed her Machismo burger, specifically mentioning the nice differences in texture between the pickled jalapenos and the crispy fried onion strings. She thought that it was just spicy enough and thought that all of the various flavors came together really well.
As for my So Cal Dbl Cheeseburger, I thought it was huge miss, which I never thought I would say about a burger from Plan Check. The patties were advertised as smash patties, and while they were thinner and smaller than their standard patties that they use in all of their other burgers, they weren’t smashed at all, so they lacked both the caramelization that you would expect from a true smash patty and the juiciness and beefiness that you would expect from a larger patty. I also thought that the patties were overly seasoned with salt. All in all, I would be very hesitant in the future to try new burgers from Plan Check that didn’t use their standard patties.
III. The Sides
Having fries included with the burgers is fairly new for Plan Check; in the past, everything was a la carte. Everyone thought that both the regular fries and ketchup were better than in the past, especially the ketchup, which nobody really cared for before. The fries used to be soggy, but this time they were crispy. DK thought that his sweet potato fries were overly salted but otherwise they were pretty standard.
IV. Miscellaneous
We had reservations for 8:45pm but we were able to be seated at 7:45pm. We sat outside on their patio, but they have heaters to keep everyone nice and toasty. Every table had a bottle of hand sanitizer on it, which was great considering the ongoing pandemic. Finding street parking on Sawtelle can be a challenge.
V. Value
Most of the Crew would pay between $15-$17 for their burgers, with one outlier of $9. Based on the individual reviews above, you might be able to figure out who said $9.
VI. The Verdict
The ratings came out to 2.8, 3.8, 4.5, 4.9, and 5.0, so most of us liked Plan Check just as much as we had in the past, but they’re not as consistently good as they used to be with all of their menu items.
The next re-visit in the Burger Crew does Los Angeles staycation is Pier Burger.