Customer Anthony Slusker gives the new Irv’s Burgers a thumbs-up alongside former owner Sonia Hong on reopening day. Customers can still find Hong serving up burgers and fries, as well as her famous paper-plate doodles.
(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
As a child, Anthony Slusker lived across the street from Irv’s and had always been curious about the burger shack, but due to his grandmother’s admonition that it was “junk food,” he stayed away until he was 8 or 9, at which point he couldn’t resist the allure. Unfortunately, he didn’t love his first burger there; his first taste was pre-Hong’s tenure, but as Slusker grew and continued to pass by the restaurant on his walk to school, he began to notice a new owner. It was Hong who brought him back.
“She was always like, ‘Come on in,’ and pulling people off the street with free samples, and I honestly fell in love with her burger,” he said. “She made the best burger I still to this day have ever eaten. I’ve eaten all over the world, and just the way that she makes the food — and the love and the family, community aspect of it — just made everything taste better, I guess.”
As a teenager, Irv’s became a gathering spot for Slusker and his friends, and he says Hong became like family to him. Once, he brought her a burger-shaped cake. Another time, the restaurant even became a hideout. One day, he’d been tagging the sidewalk and bus stops in West Hollywood with a friend when they got caught by the cops but managed to escape and run.
“Somebody caught us when we were in the process of running away, and we had nowhere else to go,” he said. “We couldn’t go home, so the first place that came into my mind was Irv’s. It was right there, so we ran up, and they’re coming after us, and she just panicked and put us into the fridge where all the onions and potatoes were.”
(They were never found, nor charged.)
On the day of the reopening, Slusker brought his little brother, whom he calls a second-generation Irv’s fan. He first introduced him to his safe haven “as soon as he was able to walk.” In a past iteration, Hong had whipped up a special burger just for the elder Slusker — a bacon, egg and cheese burger with barbecue sauce — but now, in the new home, he’s ordering a straightforward cheeseburger. And he’ll definitely be back for more, though he probably won’t be hiding in the walk-in fridge.
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