Flickr/jesswebb

Well, this may actually be it. After years of thwarting attempts by the site's landowners to toss Irv's Burgers off the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Sweetzer in West Hollywood, Irv's owner Sonia Hong may have to hang up her spatula once and for all. Despite being one of our favorite old school burger stands, Irv's Burgers is slated to shutter at the end of June, according to the site Route 66 News. And the reason, as you might guess, is money.

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Paul Bartunek

The Plan Check Stussy Collaboration Burger

Plan Check co-owners Terry Heller and chef Ernesto Uchimura will be the first to tell you that they aren't thinking more than a few steps ahead at any time. But those few steps are likely to make those hungry folks who previously had to shlep to Sawtelle very, very happy.

After being in the American comfort food game for just over a year, Plan Check has seen that original Sawtelle location go from busy to booming to near capacity, and now it's looking to expand. "We hear it all the time," Heller says. "People saying, 'If you guys were downtown, we'd come twice a week instead of once a month.' We get requests from people in completely different states."

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Noam Bleiweiss

It's almost rare to find a strip mall in Los Angeles that doesn't have some sort of doughnut place tucked away, around the corner. Sometimes they're prominently displayed, with humming lights and flashy pictures that attempt to entice the early morning commuter crowd. Others are quieter, more subtle affairs, relying on a steady income from bands of seemingly unemployed old men who sit around buying each other apple fritters and arguing over who gets to pay the $2 coffee bill. Doughnut shops are a way of life in Los Angeles, and they're an absolutely integral part of strip mall culture. Long live the strip mall doughnut.

Just west of the Burbank Airport on the corner of Vineland and Victory in North Hollywood, you can find such an L.A. doughnut classic. It's called Foster's Donuts, and every detail about the place is exactly as you'd expect, from the cash only sign down to the empty mid-afternoon booths and congenial old man running the register. They even sell cigarettes behind the counter, should you find yourself in the middle of a sweet tooth / nicotine addiction Venn diagram. And, believe it or not, Foster's isn't even the only restaurant on this Victory and Vineland corner that plays up its classic Southern California roots.

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Anne Fishbein

Big Jim Burger at JNJ Burger Shack

Yesterday was National Burger Day, capping a whole month of burger celebration. This year, the day also came right after Memorial Day -- one of three national holidays with a strong grill tradition. If you somehow missed the opportunity to enjoy a burger in the course of the past few days (or the whole month even), you're in the right town. We've had an ongoing love affair, from ever-popular classic stands to newer favorites. If you think about how there are probably enough burger styles to have something different for each day of the year, it's not unreasonable to say that any day can be a burger day in Los Angeles.

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bk.com

The Burger King rib sandwich

Fast food is a cutthroat business -- the days of sitting back and resting on your Whopper laurels are over. Or at least it seems that way, with fast food companies coming up with ever-more creative special menu items to keep customers excited.

This week came the news that Wendy's will be introducing a bacon cheeseburger on a pretzel roll. The chain has been testing the burger in some markets, and it's done very well. Focusing on bread is an interesting turn of events for fast food, and their definition of "pretzel" is sure to cause food snobs everywhere to weep salty tears. The pretzel bacon cheeseburger is expected to roll out in the fall.

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Anne Fishbein

Haven't gotten enough vitamin Burger in your life lately? Well, considering that yesterday was Memorial Day, if you still have a hankering for burgers, it's either an indication that yesterday's party plans fell through, or you're the type of tough S.O.B. who just can't get enough burger in your life.

With you hardcore beefeaters in mind, we've compiled a little mini-roadtrip of some of the best burgers around. Maybe you can't make the drive today, but save this post for some upcoming Saturday when you've got fire in your belly and a full tank of gas.

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Frederick Guerrero/The Oinkster

Doritos Bell Beefer Burger at The Oinkster

It's a burger throwdown for restaurant and diners, with the return of The Oinkster's Burger Week from Monday, June 3 to Sunday, June 9. While the slow fast food joint faces off with popular flavor profiles, customers will have the seven-day "Burger Challenge" to contend with.

Around the same time last year, The Oinkster featured a week's worth of burgers inspired by fast food chains like In-N-Out, Carl's Junior, and White Castle. This year the burgers have grown in scope, taking on the classics from diner (Bob's Big Boy) to cuisine (Filipino lumpia). The result is a lineup themed to near WWE proportions -- with challengers such as the Oink-O-Nator and Weed Eater.

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May is burger month, so it seems almost obligatory that Squid Ink get around to one of those "Best of" lists. But after eating 30 burgers in 30 days, declaring our favorite upscale burger and chowing down on five of our favorite burger stands, there didn't seem to be much ground left to cover. Thankfully, an office full of waistline-minded food writers suddenly worried about their summer figures provided the answer: veggie burgers. After all of this talk about butchers and beef and salt and fat and cheese and -- uh oh, we're getting hungry again -- it seemed only fair to give veggie burgers their due.

With a wide array of base ingredients that included everything from brown rice to yams to mushrooms to that wheat gluten putty known as seitan, it wasn't easy to compare and contrast the veggie burgers on offer around town. Some opted for real cheese, some for no cheese, others for vegan cheese. More than one location tried to make their veggie burgers as actual-burger-like as possible, while many proudly vegan restaurants shaved and pressed their way into a finished product that didn't look (or taste) anything like a juicy moo-burger. Still, there was a patty, a bun, some toppings and a slathering of condiments. Sounds like a burger to us. So after weeks of veg-heavy noshing, from upscale vegan eateries to the vegetarian options that almost seem like afterthoughts on some menus, these are the best veggie burgers we found.

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Flickr/jdrephotography

A Eureka! Burger

Hark! There's a new burger place opening up on the horizon! That is, of course, if the horizon is actually just the Hawthorne Airport. Eureka! Burger is the shouty burger lounge concept that's been popping up throughout central and southern California since 2009, and now they're coming to Hawthorne.

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Paul Bartunek

Capitol Burger

There's something special about the walk-up burger stand, that post-WWII staple of American eating that has slowly started to fade from view. There are still zillions of madre-and-padre burger operations around Los Angeles, pressing beef into ageless cast iron griddles, but many of them have opted for larger digs and expanded menus. You'll find indoor fluorescent lighting, plastic booths and maybe even a drive-thru window.

See Anne Fishbein's photos of our five favorite old-school burger stands

You know the old saying: "Give a man a drive-thru window to order from, and he'll eat for a day. But teach a man to stand outside, in the dark, quietly waiting for the right to politely ask a surly old cook if he can please have a cheeseburger, then lean on a newspaper box or squeeze onto a dumpy picnic table while he eats, and that man will have a greasy smile on his face for a lifetime."

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