Table at Third & Fairfax is a weekly dining column in 2023 where Food and Drink editor Patricia Kelly Yeo will eat her way through the Original Farmers Market. Each column will drop on Thursday for a week-by-week recap of her journey through the classic L.A. tourist attraction. Last week, Kelly visited Phil’s Deli.
Arriving at the Farmers Market on a late Wednesday morning, I’m ready to tuck into breakfast from Thicc Burger (est. 2023), which the Los Angeles Times recently named one of its favorite burgers in L.A. Now, while I was impressed with the two burgers I tried a few weeks ago, I didn’t think Thicc Burger was an obvious shoo-in for Time Out’s best burger guide, given the formidable number of competitors across town. What did pique my interest, however, was the morning-only menu, which consists of a breakfast sammie ($12), an English muffin-based riff on a McGriddle ($12), “hot” avocado toast ($12) and a breakfast burrito ($13). The day I arrive, they’re out of the Thicc Griddle and the avocado toast, so I order the breakfast sammie with bacon and the breakfast burrito with sausage.
As a sign near the register says, all food is made to order, so I’m already anticipating a short wait as I place my order. In the end, it takes about 10 minutes or so for my order, though I’m the first customer of the day so I can’t say this would be your experience later in the morning. The first thing I notice about the sausage breakfast burrito is its size: It’s on the smaller side, though the density and flavor of burrito fillings makes up for its lack of girth. (To be fair, I’m not exactly a breakfast burrito expert, nor do I have plans on becoming one.) The bacon breakfast sammie, oddly enough, features tomato and lettuce on what looks like golden-fried sliced bread.
After bites of both, it’s clear to me that the burrito is superior to the sammie. Packed with crumbled sausage, scrambled eggs, hash browns and cheese, each burrito bite is warm and satisfying. I can’t quite discern the presence of the salsa molcajete, though I suspect it’s in there somewhere. The sammie, on the other hand, tastes slightly watery due to the vegetables. There’s no plush burger bun to counteract this, and the overall effect is disappointing. The bacon is nicely chewy, which I normally prefer when eating bacon alone, but the end result when eating sandwiches is that you can oftentimes accidentally pull an entire slice out of the sandwich, leaving you with less bacon for the rest of your meal. I’m not much of a breakfast person, but I ended up finishing half of the breakfast burrito right on the spot before wrapping up the rest for lunch at home.
Meals from Table at Third & Fairfax fall into three categories: Skip It, Worth Trying and Must Have.
Vendor: Thicc Burger
Order: Sausage breakfast burrito and bacon breakfast sammie
Verdict: Worth Trying—at least the burrito is, but I’d skip the sammie.