Mateo G.
Yelp
Well, well, well; I finally tried this interesting form of business. I am from SoCal, and was interested to hear about this business attempting to capture the likeness of in n out. I for one, am not even the biggest in n out fan, but for an idea of my thoughts about in n out, I could say that the great appeal of in n out is that the burgers always taste fresh, and the price always feels fair and cheap. With that being said, the burgers are somewhat smaller, and pretty simple.
Caliburger takes the in n out concept and style and tries to not only mimic it, but expand it. Unlike in n out, this place has hot dogs, chicken sandwiches, and onion rings. A lot of variety within the offered entrees, which in n out has never attempted to do. I can't imagine how much better in n out would be if it too attempted to do this. So finally, how was it? It was not in n out. If you're looking for a clone of in n out, the only thing you will find familiar is the Caliburger option which is pretty close tasting to the cheeseburger at in n out. I can confidently recommend and say it comes somewhat close in flavor to its original, which was very cool to witness. Other than that, EVERYTHING ELSE, even the milkshakes, taste completely different. On top of that, I would say all other options are worse. The caliburger is the best thing this place has to offer. The worst thing they have here is their form of the animal style fries, which they call the Cali fries. I had to unfortunately toss mine because they were not tasty at all. I couldn't at first realize what was so off about them. I first thought it was the sauce which doesn't compare to in n outs "spread". That took partial fault, but while taking a second bite it finally hit me. It was such a strange change from the original source material, that I think at first my mind couldn't believe it. What was changed was that instead of putting a piece or two of American cheese on the animal style fries, like they do at in n out, they put this not greatly flavored cheese sauce that lasts almost identical to nacho cheese. So on the fries, instead of American cheese and secret sauce you get thousand islands and nacho cheese. No grilled onions either. A very bad flavored combination. Not sure why they do this. If I could give any feedback it would be to just keep the recipe the same. If they did I'd definitely do back and try it again because the burger wasn't too bad. They also give bigger portions than in n out, which is great. So if they made the animal style fries correctly, I would definitely come back to get their bigger sized portion. But yeah, not sure if they'd change that. I wish I could personally request the changes for my order. That would be nice. In summary, maybe skip the trip to Cali if you're trying to try in n out and just get the burger here to try it first maybe to see if you like it, but everything else aside from that, don't get it here. Not great.