Hodad's

Ocean Beach is San Diego at its most relaxed, and Hodad's has been on Newport Avenue since 1969, when it opened as little more than a burger stand. It is now a proper institution: a blue-and-yellow building covered in licence plates, surfboards and decades of stickers, with a queue that runs down the block at weekends and a drum kit parked near the door. Nobody comes for the decor, but nobody leaves it out of the story either.

The double bacon cheeseburger is why people wait. Two patties, melted American cheese, thick-cut bacon, lettuce, tomato, pickle and a slightly sweet house sauce, all on a soft bun that was clearly made for the job rather than for looks. Order it as a basket with fries, and finish with a milkshake thick enough to stand a spoon in, blended from real ice cream in the flavours you remember from childhood. The onion rings, the onion-heavy "Guido" burger and the fish tacos all deserve their share of the table.

Expect to stand in line, and expect it to be worth it. The wait moves faster than it looks, the staff keep the room turning with a well-rehearsed cheer, and the place runs on a noisy, family-friendly energy that has survived several generations of the Hardin family. There is a second Hodad's downtown in the Gaslamp Quarter, but the Ocean Beach original is the one with the beach, the crowd and the history.

Guy Fieri filmed Hodad's for Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and got precisely what that show was always hunting for: a family-run place doing one thing properly, at volume, without a marketing department anywhere within miles. Order the bacon cheeseburger and a shake, take a seat by the window, and you have the entire thesis of the series in a single sitting.