San Diego Reader

• Bar/Club
• Restaurant | American | Burgers | Downtown San Diego

Nicky Rottens Bar & Burger Joint

• 560 Fifth Avenue, San Diego, CA 92101 | Directions
• 619-702-8068 | Website

Nicky Rotten’s is a pleasant, nay, luscious surprise in the midst of touristville. Very much a Gaslamp bar (hey, look, gangster photos on the walls!) with food. But such a burger. Bun a bit sweet but still wheaty, topped with genuinely crunchy sesame seeds — toasted? Who knew that sesame seeds could matter? A generous pile of shredded lettuce provides another fine textural counterpoint, cool and crunchy throughout. Tomato is nothing special, onion sliced thin enough to blend in, bacon smoky and plentiful. Beef is properly pink, but still slightly mushy in the center: that raw, steak tartare sort of mush. Meat flavor floods the sinus cavity, tickling the olfactory bulb — not salt, not fat, but meat. Maybe skip the sauce on the side. This one doesn’t need lube.

— Ambrose Martin