[Photographs: Damon Gambuto]

Gram and Papa's has been around for a couple of years, but 2010 seems to mark its coming out party. The downtown Los Angeles restaurant played host to celebrity, bad-boy chef Ludovic Lefebre's Ludobites on at least a couple of occasions, and then made it onto Los Angeles Magazine's recent list of 17 Great L.A. Sandwiches. Even though seventeen is more picks than we're used to when it comes to "best of" lists, in a city with the world's best pastrami and tortas that will make you cry with gratitude, it's no mean feat to garner a mention.

The sandwich in question is their grilled chicken salad on a pretzel bun. Thus, when I heard the same bun was now making time with a sirloin patty, I had to go in for burger lunch. What I found was a burger that summed up my feelings about this restaurant.

The Gram and Papa's sirloin burger is a healthy half-pound of ground sirloin, but don't worry about it being short on fat. I saw these beautiful, fresh-ground patties lined-up and ready for battle in the refrigerator drawer and the flecks of fat were apparent even then. They don't over-complicate things with the addition of lettuce, tomato, red onion, mustard, and ketchup as toppings. However, the pretzel bun is a complication.

I ordered at the counter and Gram and Papa's made good on their "slow food, fast" motto when my burger arrived before I had even managed to settle into my seat. In fact, it probably should have taken a little longer as my patty arrived at a temperature that I would say was much closer to rare than my specified medium rare. That said, the high quality meat was still juicy and pleasing.

It came off the griddle with a generous crust and plenty seasoning. The grind was coarse making this a really delicious patty. The toppings were all fine, though for meat as succulent as this I might opt for lighter helping of red onion. Even the heavy layer of mustard wasn't the usual overburdening hit of acid, but that was largely because of the final element.

Mustard matches the yeasty goodness of a traditional Laugenbrezel like the bun that Gram and Papa's uses (likely from Röckenwagner), but flavor balance isn't what complicated this burger. The pretzel bun is far too substantial and tough in texture to match this delicate patty. The bun itself got no heating so it made the contrast even more unappealing.

With each bite I felt myself enjoying two distinct pleasures that undermined each other. I love a pretzel bun. I even can enjoy them with a burger, but in this case the toughness of the roll kept interfering with the tender patty. This is a bun meant for a cold sandwich like Gram and Papa's chicken salad (or, even better, a good ham and cheese), not for a warm burger.

This ill-matched bun and patty experiment isn't a failure of ingredient quality. Rather they're delicious elements that don't react well with each other. I found this to be the case with much of what I tried at Gram and Papa's. There's noticeable attention to quality, but missteps when they put things together. Even their vaunted chicken salad sandwich was, for me, a less-than-perfect marriage of Asian and German flavors. Of course, a patty as pleasing as the one I was served points toward the potential for a special burger. Alas, for now it's just another near miss.