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Fairfax’s Best Burger-and-Beer Joint Jumps to Little Tokyo Next

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The Golden State Cafe is expanding, nine years in

The Golden State burger
Yelp/Masashi F.
Farley Elliott is the Senior Editor at Eater LA and the author of Los Angeles Street Food: A History From Tamaleros to Taco Trucks. He covers restaurants in every form, from breaking news to the culture, people, and history that surrounds LA's dining landscape.

Fairfax mainstay The Golden State Cafe is expanding to Downtown, landing a well-worn location in Little Tokyo.

The restaurant first teased its sophomore effort on social media last night, pushing out a flyer announcement about the jump that also ran on the page of the owners’ sister restaurant Prime Pizza — which also happens to have a secondary location nearby in Little Tokyo. Eater has learned that Golden State will push into the former Lazy Ox Canteen space right on San Pedro, complete with its ample patio space out front. The address has flipped a few different times since the old Josef Centeno days, and was most recently a short-lived second location of Silver Lake Vietnamese restaurant Gingergrass.

Firm opening details are still coming together, but diners can largely expect the same menu of burgers, sandwiches, salads, and more, with a heavy lean on craft beer as well. For years the restaurant, which first opened back in 2009, was viewed as one of the best places anywhere in the city for a modern pub burger, and the restaurant has maintained its position as an anchor for the greater Fairfax neighborhood for all these years. Now, they get to do exactly that in Little Tokyo next.

The Golden State Cafe. 241 San Pedro St., Los Angeles, CA.