This past week, one of our all-time favorite Los Angeles restaurants, Burgerlords, made the move to go fully vegan.
The Chinatown burger stand and more recently opened Highland Park diner have always been ultra-vegan-friendly—with fully vegan from-scratch burger patties, tofu nuggets, and vegan-by-default tahini-based milkshakes—but, as longtime vegans and animal rights activists, we’re obviously thrilled with this decision. And, seemingly, the rest of LA is too—both locations entirely sold out of food this weekend, necessitating shut-downs Sunday as they prep for a Thursday reopening.
We’ve done a longer form interview here with Frederick Guerrero—one of two brothers and owners of Burgerlords. But this time, we just had one question: What precipitated the move to an all-vegan menu? Fred, pictured below, happily obliged us with an answer.
“I’ve been vegetarian since I was about 8 years old. Growing up working in my family’s restaurant, I always wanted to have my own place that represented how I ate. We’ve gone back and forth with the idea of going all vegan with the restaurants, so we figured that now was as good of a time as any to make the leap. Sure, there are other factors related to COVID, but it was ultimately about having a business that I felt in control of and fully taking ownership of the restaurants.”
To this, we say—rad.
Full vegan menu below (click for a larger view). Both the Chinatown + Highland Park locations are now open for delivery + pick-up Thursday – Sunday, 12-8PM—order online via burgerlords.com.
You can read our 2016 interview with Fred if you like.
Top image, 2018 nugs + baby photo, and bottom image by us; all other photos by ASATO iiDA.
