Fast Food Near Me in LA: The Tommy's Shack That Never Closes

Tommy's has thirty-odd locations around Los Angeles and only one of them matters for this purpose. The stand on the northeast corner of Beverly and Rampart opened on 15 May 1946, is still standing, and is open all night — the company calls it The Shack, and it is the only Tommy's where the thing you are eating and the place you are eating it have not changed in any meaningful way in eighty years. At three in the morning in a city that closes early, that combination is close to unique. This is not a nostalgia piece about a burger stand; it is a practical guide to the one that is open when everything else in Los Angeles is not.

Los Angeles at 2am is a short list of open kitchens and a lot of closed ones. Ask Karpo whether The Shack is your best bet from where you are tonight, and what to order when you get to the window.

Tom Koulax, the son of Greek immigrants, opened the stand on the northeast corner of Beverly and Rampart Boulevards, west of Downtown, in May 1946. It sold hamburgers and hot dogs topped with chili, and it was slow to start.

It grew into the corner rather than moving off it. Through the 1960s the business bought the rest of the lot at the intersection, then the northwest corner for parking and storage, then added a second service counter on the perimeter of the northeast lot. The chain proper started expanding in the 1970s and had around thirty locations by 2006.

The stand that still exists is the original one. That is an unusual sentence to be able to write about anything in Los Angeles, and it is the whole reason to choose this location over the branch closer to you.

Koulax settled on a specific chili recipe and a specific way of dressing the burger: mustard, and a thick slice of tomato. That is the build, and it has not drifted.

The tomato is not a garnish and it is not optional in spirit. On a burger this wet it is the only thing on the plate providing any resistance, and removing it — which people do — leaves you with chili and bread.

Order it as it comes the first time. There is a version of this order for everyone who eats here regularly, and none of them arrived at it by starting with modifications.

The original shack is open all night. Los Angeles has a genuine late-night food problem — a great deal of the city stops serving by ten, and the options after midnight collapse to a short list of chains, a shorter list of diners, and this.

The composition of the queue changes completely with the hour, and that is half the appeal. Late on a weekend it is a cross-section of the city that does not otherwise stand in the same place: people leaving shifts, people leaving bars, people who live on the block.

There is no dining room in the traditional sense. You order at a window and eat standing at a counter or in your car, which is not a compromise at two in the morning — it is the format working as intended.

The corner is Beverly and Rampart, in Westlake, just west of Downtown Los Angeles. It is a short drive from Downtown, Echo Park, Koreatown and Silver Lake, all of which is why it functions as the city's default last stop.

There is parking, which is the other thing this stand has that later imitators do not — the business bought the surrounding lot decades ago specifically for it. That makes it usable at an hour when street parking anywhere else is either full or unwise.

It is a busy intersection at all hours and the lot is well lit. Ordinary night-time sense applies, as it does anywhere in the city at that hour.

It is not a burger for people who dislike mess. The chili is loose, it is served in paper, and it will get on your hands regardless of technique. That is the dish.

It is not the cheapest fast food in the neighbourhood, and it is not trying to be a modern burger. The comparison people reach for — the smash-burger places that have opened all over Los Angeles — is the wrong one. This is an eighty-year-old chili burger and it is measured against other chili burgers.

And it is not a branch. If you go to the Tommy's near your house, you will get the same burger and none of this. The corner is the point.

Location: northeast corner of Beverly and Rampart Boulevards, Westlake, Los Angeles. Opened 15 May 1946 by Tom Koulax. Known as The Shack.

The original location is open all night. Order at the window; seating is a standing counter and the car park.

The standard build is a chili burger with mustard and a thick slice of tomato. Parking is on site, across the intersection from the original stand.

Tags: #LosAngeles #OriginalTommys #FastFoodNearMe #Westlake #ChiliBurger #LateNightEats #LAHistory #BeverlyAndRampart #OpenAllNight #LAEats #TheShack #1946

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Ask Karpo whether The Shack is the closest thing still open from where you are, what to order beyond the chili burger, and what else in Los Angeles serves food at the hour you are actually hungry.