Jack N’ Jill’s

We went to Jack N’ Jill’s for lunch a while back and kind of forgot about it. The Santa Monica location is a bit on the small side and there is a lack of seating. The first time I went I got the rotisserie chicken, which I highly recommend. They also have a lot of pastries that I have not tried, but they look amazing.

On to the meat! I ordered the Hickory Burger. The burger comes on standard bun. The meat is nothing special, probably a standard 80/20 blend. It was cooked well to medium. It comes topped with cheddar, tomato and lettuce. It also comes with bacon. If you read this blog you know my feelings on bacon. But this was a perfect application of the delicious meat. The burger stood on its own and the bacon was purely complimentary and that is a good thing. Bacon can really steal the show making it a less impressive burger. I will say the star of the show was the hickory barbeque sauce. It was tangy and sweet and complimented the rest of the burger. There is also an aioli on the burger, but I feel it is wasted since it gets lost behind the barbeque sauce.

Kalbi Burger

My coworker Lindsey tipped me off to Kalbi Burger and I purchased the Groupon a while back and realized I needed to use it before it expired. It is not quite what I was expecting based on what I read. I thought it would be more of a upscale place but it is really just a typical burger place in a strip mall in Koreatown. We also ordered the garlic fries to share, which I highly recommend as they were still crispy even though they had a good amount of garlic on them.

On to the burger. I ordered the Kalbi Burger (I figured this made sense since it’s the restaurant’s namesake). First off I totally missed where it said that all burgers are cooked medium-well. The patty was still juicy but would have been better cooked medium. The meat is made of ground beef rib and chuck. It was quite flavorful, but not quite the meaty flavor of some others. The bun was a sort of brioche-style bun that held together well while eating the burger. The burger came topped with American cheese, romaine lettuce and tomato. The differentiator in this burger was the Korean vinaigrette and Kalbi aioli. This is really where all of the flavor of this burger comes from. It really tasted like getting bulgogi at a Korean BBQ place. It was a very interesting burger and would recommend checking it out if you are in the area.