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You can smell the char of the Wagyu burgers from down the block, which is coincidentally how far the line often stretches. But at Melrose Avenue’s newest diner, the food isn’t the only draw. Marathon Burger is an ode to late community activist and rapper Nipsey Hussle, and his legacy continues with this new family venture and extension of Hussle’s lifestyle company.
The Times spoke to three members of Nipsey’s community about his legacy.
“He was always talking about branding, like, ‘We need a Marathon Water, we need a Marathon Burger,’” said Hussle’s older brother, Samiel “Blacc Sam” Asghedom. “This is definitely Nip’s vision and imprint. I know he would have been like, ‘Yeah, this is perfect.’”
The Grammy Award-winning Hussle — legally named Ermias Asghedom — was gunned down in 2019 outside the Hyde Park clothing store that he and his brother built into a lifestyle brand together. In the years since, murals, community organizations such as the Neighborhood Nip Foundation, music and memorials have kept Hussle’s memory strong. Now, there’s a branch of his legacy in the food world.
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Marathon Burger held its grand opening March 1, bringing fresh crowds to the former home of the original Johnny Rockets. Hussle looks on from a large black-and-white portrait along a wall of the dining room, where guests stop to pose for photos. The new diner is owned by the Marathon group — which includes Asghedom and the rapper’s children via his estate — as well as new business partner Casey Parker, a second-generation L.A. restaurateur.
Inside, guests perch on roughly a dozen stools at a counter overlooking the open kitchen and grill. They order organic hot wings, fried tail-on shrimp, salads piled with grilled seasoned vegetables, overnight-marinated portobello mushroom burgers and milkshakes made with Thrifty ice cream.
Wagyu, Asghedom feels, is the best-tasting burger meat: The high fat content melts in the mouth. They season it and smash onions into the patties on the grill, and when they’re assembling the stacks, drape them in a tangy spread and fluffy brioche buns.
The Marathon team always wanted to open a restaurant. At one point, Asghedom tried to buy the Bayou Grille in Inglewood, where he and Hussle worked during adolescence; later, they tried purchasing a fish market next to one of their clothing stores, planning to flip it into a restaurant named for their grandfather. Eventually it would be a love of burgers that proved the right fit for Marathon.
The Marathon crew’s casual lunch runs turned into a months-long quest to find the best burgers in L.A., dissecting and debating which components made the patty stacks and sauces sing the sweetest. Eventually they realized they could put all of their taste tests to good use: They’d open a Marathon burger stand, combining all of their favorite seasonings, buns, toppings and meat blends.
“Finally it hit us, like, ‘Man, we need to do this ourselves,’” Asghedom said. But it wasn’t Marathon’s first attempt.
Years before, Hussle helped launch a Fatburger location near the Marathon Clothing store at Crenshaw and Slauson; he’d negotiated minority partnership and the run of a special burger there. The deal never materialized, but Asghedom said that last year the owner of that Fatburger began advertising a rebrand as “Marathon Premium Burger” — unaffiliated with Marathon.
The Marathon group knew they’d have to jump into action and announce their own, legitimate Marathon Burger, even though they didn’t have a business plan. They took to Instagram anyway, and last July announced that Marathon Burger was coming soon.
“I’m glad that happened,” Asghedom said, “because when we saw that we said, ‘Hey, post. Post right now, make a post that way we can let people know that’s not ours. This is ours.’”
Asghedom and Hussle had spent some of their teen years working at New Orleans-inspired restaurant Bayou Grille. They started with $40 stints cleaning the floors and trash bins; when three of the cooks left, Hussle and Asghedom filled in. Some of that base knowledge has made its way to Marathon Burger, with cornmeal-dusted fried shrimp similar to Bayou Grille’s, as well as the secret-recipe wings, now made at Marathon with Jidori chicken.
Chefs Adrian Vela and Eduardo Osorio had cooked for Hussle for years — and every time they would, Asghedom asked them to bring their house-pickled Fresno peppers. Naturally, those made it onto the signature Marathon Burger when they consulted on the project.
Parker also lent a hand in developing the menu, especially when it came to vegan items. Every morning, the team whips up patties built from whole ingredients, such as wild rice, potato, parsley, garlic and shallots. At first, they started with only 20 patties. Now they’re making 150 vegan patties each day, and they still sell out.
For Parker, it’s his way of continuing his father’s legacy of Larry Parker’s 24-Hour Diner in Beverly Hills, which became a hub for clubgoers, actors, hip-hop artists and other musicians at all hours of the night. Parker wanted to build his own cultural, musical hub and diner with the Marathon team.
In a way, that’s exactly what happened.
Celebrities such as 2 Chainz and YG have dropped by to eat and, occasionally, jump behind the grill themselves.
“The street feels better now,” said Parker, who was a minor partner in the building’s previous tenant, Nomoo. “If this place is happening, Melrose is alive — I’ve seen the difference.”
The positive energy is unmissable. Family-friendly music — mostly oldies — blares both indoors and on the patio. Friends bump into each other, hug, laugh, dance. Like Hussle, Asghedom is also beloved in the community. He periodically stops to take photos with guests or sign merchandise.
Brian Payne was one such diner, posing with Asghedom in a corner of the restaurant. The Detroit resident wore a black hoodie to lunch that had “Legends live forever” written in gold, with a split photo of Hussle and Kobe Bryant across the back.
To those who knew him, Nipsey Hussle was a pillar in his native South L.A. community.
“I had to stop here before I left,” he said. “I’ve been to a lot of really amazing places since I’ve been here [in L.A.], but this one touches my heart. Nipsey’s legacy will always live on, like Tupac, but to see what his brother’s doing in putting this out here for the community is amazing.”
Payne brought his son and nephew with him, and called the Wagyu burger one of the top three burgers he’s eaten in life.
“I don’t know if I haven’t met anybody that isn’t a [Hussle] fan, you know?” he said. “Not just for what he’s done in the rap game and being famous all over the world but what he’s done for other people and where he’s from. ... It’s great for the community that we have a place to go and eat phenomenal, phenomenal food.”
The support from fans like Payne, Asghedom said, has been overwhelming.
He’s recognized roughly 20% of Marathon Burger’s guests: friends, neighbors and collaborators, some of whom bought sweaters from him off the streets years ago, others who purchased bootleg movies from him and others still who ate his and Hussle’s cooking at Bayou Grille.
But he said the remaining 80% are entirely new to him, and the response has been “1,000 times bigger” than he’d ever imagined.
The positive feedback and the multi-hour lines down the block aren’t just incentive for the Marathon team to keep pushing (they’re already looking at expanding to the Westside). It’s proof, especially to Asghedom, that Hussle’s marathon continues for anyone who can use the restaurant’s success as encouragement.
“Hussle’s mission is still going,” he said. “It shows that ideas and the hard work behind the ideas can flourish, and Hussle’s mission was to inspire people.”
Marathon Burger is located at 7507 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, and open daily from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Breakfast service is expected to resume in the coming weeks.
