Gather 'round, little Yelpers, as your favorite Elite Yelp correspondent takes you waaay back in time when he was a mere whipper-snapper, a wannabe Elite Yelper at San Pedro High School, circa 1986-88.
Back then, Ronald Reagan sat in the Oval Office, NBC sitcoms Cheers and The Cosby Show ruled the boob tube and you could order the "Special Combo Plate" at Fantastic Cafe for only $3.65.
That would getcha a ¼ pounder burger/cheeseburger, fries, onion rings, a salad and a large soft drink. You'd quaff one of those on your lunch break, and suddenly the prospect of AP Gov and AP Lit in fifth and sixth periods didn't seem sooo dreadfully unimportant!
Guess what, kiddos? Fantastic Cafe, or like this location has rechristened itself, Fantastic Burgers, will still unspool this extraordinarily filling meal straight offve their sizzling hot plancha (flat top grill)...but it'll setya back $16.85 plus tax.
My youngest son Brad & I were on our way back home when we hung a left onto Cherry from Wardlow when we both noticed the biig blue "Fantastic" letters calling to us. My three kids have HEARD enough stories of my halcyon high school days, that they all vividly recognize the NAME, even if none of em had tried it...til today!
Brad and I both ordered the same special plate, hold the tomatoes, with salads drenched in thousand.
The caliber of food is...good. Not hold onto your pillowcase and squeeze tight INCREDIBLE, but good. The burgers still have that uncanny char taste, the onion rings simply breaded in a thin, lacquered breading that shatters when you snap into them.
But the unexpected STAR of our meal? The fries. Shocked to be writing that- Cause for 30+ years the Fantastic Cafe brethren of restaurants served steak fries...which I generally detest. Not so, anymore! Tonight's fries arrived as slender, golden brown stalks generously slathered with seasoned salt, dancing like Rockettes from the plate to our mouths!
The salads were the duds of the meal. While the size and chilled temperature of the salads are still excellent, tonight's lettuce, carrots, tomato + cucumber arrived a wee overripe.
The service is still very good- Fantastic encourages guests to leave their dirty dishes at the table and they'll even ferry your piping hot plate from plancha to table.
Why not five stars? Because of the wonky salads and for violating a cardinal law of dessert. Lemme explain. Fantastic serves decadent Thrifty Drugs Ice Cream...which any longtime Los Angeleno will tellya is THE WORLD CHAMPION DODGERS of ice creams.
But these jabronies are selling it for a ghastly $5.25/single scoop cone!! That's practically Baskin Robbins level of extortion!! Especially cuz Thrifty was famous for dishing out their delish cones for only $0.35/cone during my whipper-snapper days of high school then USC. Sheeeeeeeeeiiit. Even now, I can still find Thrifty ice cream at Rite Aids for circa $1.85/scoop.
So- For nearly tripling the go to price of my fave ice cream and serving "Reagan era" salads, Fantastic Burgers gets dinged one star.
But otherwise? If you're feeling a wee malnourished, require some good ol' American carb-dense sustenance to stiffen your spine...then seize a Jackson and stroll into Fantastic for a meal that'll leave ya feeling rather, well, fantastic. read more