Power down a burger at the 49er Tavern and a beer at the other Nugget

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES

The Gold Rush connection to Long Beach lives on in about seven institutions—all very likely traceable to Cal State Long Beach, which was founded in 1949. There’s the university, its athletics teams, the campus Nugget Grill and Pub, and the Daily 49er student newspaper; and elsewhere, the Prospector restaurant/nightclub on Seventh Street, the Nugget bar on Anaheim Street, and the 49er Tavern, perched on a sliver of Bellflower Boulevard within walking distance of the university.

The Tavern is where you go after an all-night poker game or a late night at work, for a brew, some idle sports talk with bros—and a towering mountain of a hamburger. It’s where current City of Long Beach media relations guy Ed Kamlan went to give Daily 49er proofs a last weekly read, back when he was editor there. It’s where famous CSULB prof and poet Gerald Locklin drank long ago. And despite being sold about a year ago by its longtime owners, it’s still home to a great burger—one made even more memorable when chased with a Corona at the Nugget across town.

As bars with food go, the Tavern is a lot like Joe Jost’s: they don’t make it until you order it—and they make it right there. You say the word and the guy goes out back to the grill, returning with a savory chunk of ground beef so tender it will eventually disintegrate. Having previously enjoyed God’s Own Cheeseburger (heavenly/comes with cheese), I ordered the Pendejo Burger: served with a split ortega chili atop the patty, a slice of jalapeño jack cheese, and ’tude sauce. Pendejo means “asshole” in Spanish, but we’ll give that and the ’tude sauce a pass. In fact, you don’t even notice the sauce, because 49er burger meat is basted in butter, minced garlic and Worcestershire sauce, and served with very lightly grilled purple onion slices. Over all that delicious white noise, the ortega chili and the jalapeño jack cheese are barely heard—which is . . . actually just fine. You wouldn’t want a hamburger that didn’t taste like meat; it would be some kinda weird salad—held together, in this case, by an excellent sesame seed bun.

The Pendejo is but one burger—a third of a pound of meat. There’s also the zesty Redneck (comes with “tangy Q sauce”); the Arnold (tavern ham, bacon and swiss cheese)—and the Wuss, which comes with tavern ham and cheese. Sometimes, there’s homemade meatloaf. And there’s also the Jesus-size, which means they up your burger patty to a half-pound of meat for an extra 50 cents. What would Jesus do? He’d shut up and order it. Jesus hates whiners. He told us that.

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Your burger comes with a bag of chips, but for local color we’d suggest a beer at the Nugget—a locally world-famous little working man’s bar immortalized recently by Long Beach artist Sandow Birk.

This was once just a vintage neighborhood joint like so many others, with the extra architectural twist of a neon pole sign and sawtooth-angled front windows, now covered by the wood-paneled interior. A sign of the times, the crowd skews heavily Latino; the ranchero music on the jukebox is cranked up loud, and all the beer signs are in Spanish. This place and the traces of its past—the worn woodgrain Formica and Naugahyde bar, the signage, and the collection of vintage beer and booze bottles above the bar—will eventually fade unnoticed, leaving only the cockroaches.

Yes: the roaches, one of whom explored the bar in front of me. I pounded it with my Corona but missed—getting the bottle back into my mouth right before it overflowed—and the barmaid shrugged. This is the type of place you’d maybe think twice about visiting. But, like so many old Long Beach bars—the Pink Elephant, the Algiers, the Shamrock—it will one day disappear, and with it, your dilemma.

THE 49ER TAVERN 5600 PACIFIC COAST HWY | LONG BEACH 90804 | 562.494.7670 | OPEN DAILY, 11AM-MIDNIGHT | BURGERS AND DRINKS FOR TWO, $20 | THE NUGGET BAR 468 W ANAHEIM ST | LONG BEACH 90813

Tags: 49er, burgers, cal state long beach, Food, Long Beach, the nugget