Smashburgers are out. Head to this Brazilian spot for colossal, detach-your-jaw burgers
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- The burgers at this Brazilian restaurant are as long as submarine sandwiches.
- If you’ve never tried a Brazilian burger, imagine a supersized plate of churrasco on a bun.
- The key to eating a Brazilian burger: squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, then open wide.
At Pedroca’s Burguer in Lawndale, the burger pendulum has swung from the lacy, gossamer patties of the smashburger to a creation so thick, you’ll need to detach the lower half of your jaw to consume it.
And it’s not just the patties. Each burger is a recumbent tower of meat, cheese and vegetables, some built with layers of both ham and bacon, shredded chicken and a fried egg. The buns struggle to contain their contents, appearing swollen and ready to soil the table, your lap and your shirt.
Over the last five years, chef and owner Pedro Carvalho has become the great explicator of the Brazilian burger, on a quest to introduce Los Angeles to this supersized version of his favorite sandwich.
Longtime and new restaurants alike make this Culver City neighborhood a unique destination for Brazilian food in Los Angeles. Visitors can sample Brazilian pizza, sandwiches, homestyle cooking, and, of course, barbecue.
When Carvalho moved to the United States in 2016, he missed the burgers he ate in his hometown of Belo Horizonte, the capital city of Minas Gerais state in southeastern Brazil.
There, the beef patties were stacked with fried potato sticks and corn, and the buns were slathered in a mayonnaise-based pink sauce. The burgers came wrapped tightly in small plastic bags that served a dual purpose: They made the burgers easier to transport and easier to eat without making a mess.
“Every burger comes with corn and potato sticks for sure, and the special homemade mayonnaise,” says Carvalho. “It’s like a huge burger. We call it podrao, a big and dirty meal.”
In February 2020, Carvalho was working as an Uber delivery driver when he decided to make his own version of the Brazilian burgers at home. His Brazilian friends took notice when he started posting his potato stick- and corn-stuffed burgers on Instagram.
“A lot of friends asked me where they can buy the burgers because we don’t have any Brazilian burger places in L.A.,” he says. “I wanted to bring a taste of Brazil here.”
A year later, Carvalho started cooking his burgers out of a shared kitchen space at the Brazilian Mall, a strip mall that houses multiple Brazilian businesses in Culver City.
He was able to build a steady business of fellow Brazilians who were looking for a taste of home. He spent a couple of years cooking there before taking a pause for mental health reasons.
“I was not feeling good, I was depressed, but the Brazilian community, a lot of them already knew me, and they were missing my burgers,” he says.
He found a small storefront in a strip mall in Lawndale and opened Pedroca’s Burguer in the spring of 2024. It’s named for the childhood nickname his godparents gave him in Brazil.
“It’s like little Pedro,” he says.
Pedroca’s is a tiny space that exudes big personality, with yellow and green walls covered in various Brazilian paraphernalia. There’s a signed Brazilian national team jersey from Douglas Costa; each table is adorned with both a mini Brazilian and American flag; you can count on Brazilian soccer or music on the television; and the fridge is stocked with Guaraná Antarctica, a guaraná-flavored soda from Brazil that tastes like a mix between apple cider and ginger ale.
The best burgers in Los Angeles span smashburgers, fancy restaurant options, roadside-style burgers with hefty patties, vegetarian options and more.
Like the burgers you might find in Carvalho’s hometown, his Brazilian burgers sit snuggly in small plastic bags, bursting with tiny fried potato sticks and kernels of corn.
On a recent visit, I look around at the fellow diners. The bravest are gripping their plastic-wrapped burgers, interchanging bites with swipes of a napkin. Others are cutting their burgers with a knife. Everyone has pink sauce on the corners of their mouths.
Carvalho admits that his burgers are larger than the ones he grew up eating, but he’s hoping the size will help set him apart in a city crowded with smashburgers.
“We know smashburgers are really popular here, so we wanted to think about doing something different,” he says. “Everyone asks me, ‘How do I eat it?’”
You squeeze.
My Picanha burger is at least 6 inches long, with a mound of grilled and sliced top sirloin cap (picanha) on the bottom, drizzled in a bright green garlic and onion sauce. On top is a pile of crispy potato sticks, leafy green lettuce and sliced tomato. The final layer is a scoop of canned corn in a puddle of Carvalho’s version of Thousand Island dressing called “special sauce.”
I squeeze a corner then bite. Squeeze another corner then bite again. I begin to understand the significance of the plastic bags.
“All my life in Brazil, I eat with this bag,” he says. “These bags are very hard to find, and we have to bring them from Brazil. We get them whenever we go back or my family comes here. When I know someone is coming here, I tell them to bring more bags for me.”
The X-Raposão is the heftiest burger on the menu, stacked with two 6-ounce beef patties blanketed in mozzarella cheese, corn, potato sticks, sliced ham, shredded chicken breast, lettuce, chopped rounds of fried sausage, a fried egg, sliced tomato, bacon and “special sauce.”
It’s the length of a submarine sandwich.
Name of restaurant: Squarefritz. Owner André Lee said that he essentially made up the name.
Unless you can unhinge your jaw, the X-Raposão is a fork-and-knife burger. As long as you get some of the potato sticks and corn into each bite, there’s enough lubrication and varying textures to carry you through the many layers of pork, beef and chicken. Each component is cooked individually on the grill, the burger patties plump with crusty edges, the sausage rounds properly caramelized, the bacon crisp and the egg a couple of seconds past runny.
It will stretch both your mental and physical capacity for textures in a single mouthful. But if you’re ever crushed potato chips onto a deli sandwich, the sensation is immediately familiar.
“It’s not easy to understand the flavors,” Carvalho says. “It’s like late-night food, very popular in Brazil when you leave the clubs.”
For those looking for a more manageable bite, the gourmet burgers are served upright, wrapped in paper in a basket. The unanimous favorite at the table was the Churrasco, Carvalho’s interpretation of a plate of Brazilian barbecue on a bun.
He layers a beef patty with sweet and smoky calabresa sausage and strips of bacon. For the cheese element, Carvalho grills thick slabs of coalho, a firm Brazilian cheese with a similar squeaky texture to halloumi. He sprinkles on some farofa, the yuca powder typically served with plates of grilled meat, rice and beans. The burger is dressed with a chunky, almost pickled vinaigrette Carvalho makes with chopped tomato, onion, bell pepper, oil and vinegar. It’s finished with a drizzle of American barbecue sauce.
“It’s nice to see him following his dreams,” says Thiago Carvalho, Pedro’s brother who helps him run the restaurant. “Many people didn’t believe in him. They told him it would never work, but he works really hard and is never satisfied. I know once he gets another location, he will look for another.”
On the heels of the restaurant’s one-year anniversary, Carvalho has his sights on a storefront in Hollywood, where he plans to attract the post-club crowd and be open late. And once he secures that location, he says he’ll look for another.
“Every week by week we get more Americans,” he says. “We just want everyone to taste this.”
Where to try Brazilian burgers
Pedroca’s Burguer, 14405 Prairie Ave Unit D., Lawndale, (424) 297-0087, www.instagram.com/pedrocasburguer
