So I went to the new Tommy’s in San Diego on Clairemont Mesa Boulevard between the 805 and the 163. It, like the Tommy’s in Hollywood (on Hollywood Blvd.), has an indoor sit-down place to eat, unfortunately essentially resembling an In-n-Out.

For those not in the know, Tommy’s is burger place that specializes in chilli burgers, specifically. The original site was on the corner of Rampart Blvd. and Beverly Blvd., in part of town that was part of the infamous Rampart Division(wikipedia entry), and now part of the (relatively) recently defined Historic Filipinotown (just adjacent to the rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods of Echo Park and Silver Lake) This site was (and I think still is—I haven’t been there for a long time) just a “ramshackle shack” (as described by the official text), little more than a corner stand. I remember going there as a little kid, when me and my parents used to live nearby on Benton Way just north of the 101. The site near where my parents’ current house is now, in Eagle Rock (yet another rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of L.A.), is also near a famous Tommy’s site. This one is open late into the evening, and is where lots of people of would hangout at 3am when everything else is closed. This too is really nothing more than a shack, although it does have a drive-through and a place to sit outside. I didn’t really miss it until I moved up to Northern California. While they started putting up In-n-Out’s (another famous Southern California burger joint) in the Bay Area when I was up there, Tommy’s was (and is) exclusively Southern Californian, specifically L.A. (at least until they opened one up in Barstow—about an hour north of San Bernardino and two hours southwest of Vegas.) This one in S.D. is only the second one not in L.A. It doesn’t have the nostalgic feel that the Rampart one and the Eagle Rock one have (and which the Hollywood one also lacks), but at least it tastes good.