A Yelp History of a Beloved Neighborhood Burger Shack
On the northeast corner of Santa Monica Blvd and Virgil Ave stands a small shack, maybe thirty square feet at best. When I moved to the neighborhood in 2012, the shack was a Mexican restaurant called El Unico Pollo Taquero. El Unico Pollo was well known for its quality inexpensive food and the constant presence of grill smoke from the many chickens they grilled and served every day. You used to be able to buy a whole chicken plus rice and beans for approximately $12, and that meal was big enough to feed at least two very hungry people.
A few months ago, in mid-January, my collaborator Samanta noticed that El Unico Pollo had disappeared overnight. The red and white of their building’s exterior remained, but gone was the grill smoke, the colorful picnic tables, the music, the El Unico Pollo sign, and the bustle of individuals and families buying a meal.
Unsure of what was to come, I watched the shack for a month or two. No movement. Then, suddenly one day, the colorful shack had been painted a dull gray and white, a common color-scheme for incoming businesses, as well as for newly renovated homes and apartment buildings in the area. The defining features for El Unico Pollo had been stripped away, leaving only the shape of the building but none of the character. A sign went up shortly thereafter that said BBQ + Rice. BBQ + Rice is a local chain that has at least one other brick-and-mortar location. They primarily sell rice and salad bowls topped with BBQ’d meats for $10-$11 per bowl.
But this is not the story I am here to tell you. This is only the end of a much longer history for the little shack that stands on the corner of Santa Monica Blvd. A shack that, in its 70+ year history, has been home to at least five different dining establishments: BBQ + Rice, El Unico Pollo, Mini Bites, Sean’s Burgers, and what appears to me to be the original, most famous, and most beloved restaurant that once inhabited the shack, Jay’s Jayburgers.
I have been trying to piece together the history of all these restaurants for months now, collecting memories from my various neighbors, reading through local blog posts and press about the shack’s different occupants/owners, and, most surprisingly, perusing a now defunct Yelp page for the original restaurant that occupied the shack: Jay’s Jayburgers. But before we get to that Yelp page, I’m going to try and give you a brief history of how Jay’s came and went from the corner of Santa Monica Blvd and Virgil Avenue.
According to a 2005 LA Times article by Bob Pool, Jay’s Jayburgers opened at the Santa Monica Blvd location in 1968 after existing for more than a decade at nearby Los Angeles City College as a sandwich shop. The stand itself was built in 1947 and was apparently one of many of its kind in that era of Los Angeles. Jay’s is by far the longest standing occupant of the shack, and the restaurant’s dramatic history is well documented in Pool’s article, including fights between Jay’s family and the land owners who own the property on which Jay’s shack resided, threats, lawsuits, protests, and a community effort to buy the restaurant and save Jay’s sometime in the early 2000’s. I won’t reiterate all the details here, but both Marla Dickerson’s and Bob Pool’s articles about the history and drama surrounding Jay’s—written five years apart—are worth a read.
Jonathan Gold even wrote about Jay’s in his 2000 book Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles. He writes:
Jay’s Jayburger is a small chuck of old Los Angeles entrenched at the corner of Santa Monica and Virgil, a hamburger shack with a half-dozen stools, a tiny counter, and a permanent cloud of White Owl smoke that almost overpowers the funk of frying meat. At one end of the counter, a chrome rack displays congealing slabs of pie as sleekly as if they were Claes Oldenberg constructions; toward the rear, a handlettered sign lists the cigars for sale. Like Irv’s Burgers in West Hollywood, perhaps, or the old Pete’s Grandburger downtown, Jay’s anchors its neighborhood with a flourish and a paper cup of bad coffee.
This neighborhood staple with its stalwart namesake at the helm for the majority of its existence eventually closed for good in 2005. It was soon replaced by a mysterious restaurant called Sean’s Burgers, which my neighbor tells me was run by a relative of the same family who owns the 7-Eleven across the street from the burger shack. In 2007, folks at Eater did a very short write up of Sean’s, asking: “Inquiring minds want to know: Who is this Sean and why does he want to serve burgers out of a shack? If you're Sean or have the answer, drop us a note.” After Sean’s closed, there was apparently a brief stint of a restaurant called Mini Bites, which also sold burgers, until El Uniquo Pollo opened sometime after 2010.
What I am really here to talk to you about, though, is not the already well-documented drama surrounding Jay’s Jayburgers’ slow, painful death or the turnover of all the new restaurants, but about the unexpected places in which people store their memories.
Whatever your feelings about Yelp, you likely don’t think of it as a first point of reference for memories of a beloved, now gone dining establishment. But tracing the history of the food shack on Santa Monica Blvd. and Virgil Ave brought me to one of the loveliest, unexpected repositories for community memory I have ever come across. Jay’s Yelp page contains 20 five-star reviews, all of which were composed after the restaurant closed in 2005. The earliest review comes a year after the restaurant’s demise, and the most recent reviews are from this year. Many of these reviews do comment on the quality of the food, of course, and everyone agrees the burgers were top notch.
“Best damned hamburger ever served!,” wrote Bob S in 2022.
“Best burger I've ever tasted. I miss this place, everyone I brought was hooked on a jay burger, my mouth is watering thinking about it,” wrote Jessica L in 2019.
But what is most compelling to me are the personal histories stored on this page. Chris D wrote in 2021:
Wow! Jay's I use to eat here in the mid to late 70's when I was a young kid, I would get money from my mom and go to Jay's I've talked to Jay, and the cooks Nacho and Smitty what a great place I'll always remember Jay burger's I haven't had a burger better since JAY'S.
Sophia D wrote in 2018:
Awwwwwe. I remember this place. I'm pregnant right now and was just thinking, "Man! I could really go for a Jay's burger right about now." And then I remembered that it's long gone into burger joint heaven. My mom used to take us here when we were kids and I just remember it being the best burger ever from the tiniest little shack in deep East Hollywood. May you be feeding Elvis and Juan Gabriel up there in heaven, little Jay. RIP. Holdin' it down.
So many of the memories on this page involve the reviewer reflecting on their childhood and their families. Jessica C wrote in 2009:
As a child my dad use to bring me here all the time. I remember being so short my dad had to lift me up to sit on the bar stool, and as I grew up I still continued to come here, As an adult they knew my order before I even exited my car. So sad to see what a wonderful place now closed... My mouth still water's whenever I drive past what use to be Jay's burgers. THE BEST BURGER JOINT IN LOS ANGELES. RIP!
Reviewers try to piece together the history of this place, to track and trace its personalities and changes. Louie F wrote a little mini-history in 2012 that even included an old photo of Jay’s as it looked at one point in its multi-decade existence.
Yup, closed and it was my favorite chilli cheese burger of all time. My dad used to take us there and the quality of the burgers were the same deliciousness when I was 10 all the way up to when I got married and started taking my wife there, who happens to also think it's the best chilli cheese burger she's ever had (we grew up down the street near Burns & Virgil) and hoped to take my son there too one day but it is GONE. A few people have compared it to Tommy's and I'll just say this: After growing up eating Jay's burgers, I never thought much about Tommy's and never understood what the big deal was (besides the history of the franchise in L.A.).
Just wanted to add what I know from people I know around the neighborhood as to why it closed:
Jay (the owner) was someone who didn't care about franchises and without telling you so, his thing was all about staying close and knowing his customers. He would sit there while you ate a burger and tell you stories about back when he first started his little burger joint across the street from LACC.
The owners of the 7/11 across the street bought the lot where Jay's was (it was a small shack really) and I know at one point, Jay had the opportunity to buy the lot and expand on the joint, but I figure Jay didn't go for it due to finances or maybe a lack of interest (in the early 90's, Jay was already well into his 70's).
When he passed away, one of the cooks (Nacho) said his daughter would take over the business. Around this time, the owners of the lot increased the rent and word began to spread that Jay's would be closing. I remember some of the locals got together and picketed at 7/11 in protest (since we all knew the situation with the rent being increased).
Jay's stayed open for a few months after that before closing, and the owners of the 7/11 demolished the two shops next to the lot and added some furniture store and their own burger joint, which I've never been to due to sentimental reasons (I don't care to disappoint myself enough to try that burger and compare it to Jay's, which I can taste from memory to this day, a decade or so after it's been gone).
I hope one of the cooks comes up with enough money to start up a franchise, it was all about the chilli and I remember going to work in the morning and passing by to get a chilli cheese with an egg on top. R.I.P. Jay and Jay's Burgers.
One reviewer even included a blurry photo of the old Jay’s from Glen Duncan’s book Route 66 in California.
Jay’s was itself a physical space where the community could come together, and although the purpose of Jay’s was to feed people and not to preserve and maintain memories for generations, Jay’s and places like it—local pupuseria California Grill, the laundromat, the park—are all physical spaces in which neighbors to co-create memories and to share histories. As the neighborhood continues to change and legacy businesses are pushed out, neighbors not only lose access to the businesses they rely on for their daily needs, they lose access to the pleasures and joys of places like Jay’s, and they lose access to community spaces where they can build and share memories with one another.
When communities are not given a means of documenting what was, when they are not given a place to share their memories communally, they have to resort to unexpected alternatives, to turn a review website, for instance, into a space for shared memory. But the risk in doing such a thing is that at any time, Yelp could delete these pages, could purge their databases, could disappear all together as a company, and all of these memories would be lost (those of us who poured our hearts out in long-gone and irretrievable MySpace blog posts know this pain well).
What if instead of Yelp, the neighborhood had an archive—both a physical location and maybe a website—that was built and maintained by community members? What if that place collected these kinds of images and stories and preserved them for generations to come? It can be hard to lose something you love, but that thing you love can become almost reachable again through shared memory. As the neighborhood loses more and more of the places and people that made it what it once was, perhaps we can make a space, much like in this newsletter, where those memories can come back to life momentarily when we remember them together.
Have you talked to your local library about maybe keeping a binder of your articles so that there is a paper version of your digital files?
I grew up on Commonwealth between Fountain and Lexington and never ate at Jay’s Burger because I was a picky kid. I remember it and remember my dad eating the burgers before he died in 1993 but I never ate one. I am kicking myself now!!!!