Burger Lounge test market expands to Del Mar

The Flora Lounge Burger, a plant-based burger at Burger Lounge Del Mar and Hillcrest

Oct. 23, 2020 1 PM PT

Burger Lounge has expanded its monthlong test market of a new menu of plant-based items to Del Mar this week.

Two weeks ago, the San Diego-based restaurant chain introduced a new Flora and Fauna choose-your-protein menu at its Hillcrest store at Fourth and University avenues in Hillcrest. Now it’s also available for a limited time at the Del Mar location in the Flower Hill Promenade shopping center. The expanded menu includes a new plant-based burger as well as cashew-based non-dairy shakes, vegan cheese and plant-based chicken nugget-like alternatives.

The two San Diego stores, as well as one store in the Los Angeles community of Larchmont, are serving as the sole test markets for the products before the company rolls out customers’ favorites chainwide. At the Hillcrest and Del Mar stores, diners can sample Sweet Earth’s Awesome Burger, and in Larchmont, diners will get the Impossible Burger. The Awesome Burger has pea protein powder as its main ingredient.

Pam Kragen writes about San Diego restaurants at The San Diego Union-Tribune. Email her at pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com.

Eat | Drink Restaurants

Pam Kragen

Pam Kragen is the arts and entertainment editor, as well as the chief theater, dining and opera critic, for the San Diego Union-Tribune. She joined the Union-Tribune staff in October 2012 after 27 years at the North County Times, where she served as the Arts & Features Editor, as well as the paper’s longtime arts writer and theater and opera critic. She is the co-founder of the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from San Diego State University and completed fellowships in theater criticism at the University of Southern California and opera-classical music criticism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. And in 2022, she was chosen as one of the fellows in the prestigious National Critics Institute, run by the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterf, Conn.