California

Everyone has an opinion about LA, and what I’ve come to realise is that they’re all correct – because how can anything as vast and complex as Los Angeles be understood as anything other than a constellation of individualised experiences? The same is true for burgers, or any food. In response to a reader’s query as to whether or not a particular burger he ate in college was really as good as he remembered, the New Yorker’s Helen Rosner replied with a philosophical “phenomenology of cheeseburgers”. She posited that when it comes to any given burger you’ve enjoyed, “you created it, just as much as the white-capped guy standing at the grill did. The mouth and brain and cascade of sensations were yours. There is no true burger per se … it didn’t become the burger you ate until you ate it.” Likewise, LA doesn’t become the LA you know and love until you know and love it.

Rosner concluded to the reader that, of course, you did love the burger, but more than that, “you love the person you see in your memory”. Now, I don’t often allow myself nostalgia; I think of it as a treacherous path to go down. But when I think about In-N-Out, I can’t help myself, because I do love that wide-eyed Wisconsinite chowing down on Double-Doubles under smoggy sunsets. I miss him. I miss those burgers, I miss that city, and I miss that country.

Best thing I ever ate? My first In-N-Out burger in LA -- Tim Anderson, 3/21/2026