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Chef Phillip Frankland Lee moved from Los Angeles to Austin during the Covid-19 pandemic, but there was not a damn chance that he was abandoning California.
Lee, who grew up in Los Angeles, has continued to operate Sushi by Scratch Restaurants. The Montecito outpost earned a 2021 Michelin star, and Sushi by Scratch is also going strong at its locations in Encino and the SLS Beverly Hills. Lee keeps pushing harder at Encino’s Pasta | Bar, which has had a Michelin Star for five consecutive years and was featured in Apple TV’s Knife Edge series last year. (In 2025, Lee and his brother, Lennon, made history by becoming the first siblings to earn a Michelin star at different U.S. restaurants in the same year.)
And now he’s back in L.A. to remind his hometown that he’s also an ace at creating casual food. On Friday, Feb. 27, Lee and pro skateboarder Neen Williams will open NADC Burger’s first Los Angeles location in Westwood, near the UCLA campus.
NADC, which is short for Not a Damn Chance, is a wagyu burger spot that Lee and Williams already operate in Austin, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Fort Worth, Denver, Charlotte and Nashville. The menu is straightforward and habit-forming, with double wagyu cheeseburgers and beef tallow fries.
NADC has become a viral, celebrity-friendly sensation, with clientele including David Beckham and Zedd. Jelly Roll, who has declared that NADC’s burger is the best he’s ever had, loves it so much that he serves the burger at his Goodnight Nashville honky-tonk. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck recently popped by NADC in Austin and also headed next door to Lee’s new Shokunin sushi restaurant.
“I think what sets us apart at NADC is that I run it like I run the line at Pasta or Sushi,” Lee tells Observer. “I put as much attention into every spec when we’re building the burger.”
There’s American cheese, secret sauce (a ketchup and mayonnaise base enhanced with Tabasco and some “little secret notes to make it extra umami”), onions, a generous amount of pickles and “slightly tamed” jalapeños that are boiled before they’re pickled. The beef is American wagyu with Japanese genetics. And when each 3-ounce patty comes off the griddle, it goes onto a resting rack with a 90-second timer so that the juices settle and excess grease drips off. This is precision-focused cooking that grew out of Lee’s backyard hangs with Williams.
Like Jelly Roll, Zedd and Joe Rogan (who collaborated with NADC on a limited-edition burger in Austin last year), Williams was a guest at the counter of Sushi by Scratch when he met Lee.
“I was already a fan of his because I grew up skateboarding,” Lee says. “He was solo, and I always talk to everybody. He’s like, ‘Yeah, I like to cook.’ I’m like, ‘OK, cute.’ And then he shows me a picture of his backyard where he has a 12-foot masonry hearth that he built himself. I’m like, ‘Oh, you really cook.’”
Lee and Williams started hanging out a lot, skateboarding together, getting their wives together and cooking together.
“We did whole pigs and a lot of steaks over the fire,” Lee says. “And one thing we were doing often was burgers.”
Lee had recently returned from Bangkok, where he had been working on a sushi restaurant and a burger spot that never opened due to the pandemic. So he was in the mood to make burgers, and he and Williams started giving away burgers at Austin skateparks and comedy shows. That led to a 2022 pop-up and then, in 2023, NADC’s first brick-and-mortar location.
The success of NADC has spawned the Not A Damn Chance! podcast, with Lee and Williams talking to guests like Jelly Roll, Zedd, Bert Kreischer, Tom Segura, Mel Robbins, Aaron Franklin and poker pro Doug Polk. Lee is an avid poker player who’s done well in tournaments. And to use a gambling term, he’s been on some kind of rush, opening restaurant after restaurant.
Lee didn’t have any intention of moving to Austin when he went there in 2020 for a sushi pop-up. But after he saw that pop-up sell out with a 25,000-person waiting list, he kept it going month to month. After five months in Austin, Lee looked at his wife, pastry chef Margarita Kallas-Lee, and said, “I think we live in Austin now.”
Lee has built a new life in Texas, where he’s now working to create his most over-the-top project yet. He’s found four acres in Hill Country, about half an hour from Austin, where he plans to have a farm, inn and restaurant with aspirations at three-Michelin-star status and World’s 50 Best recognition.
“We will grow or harvest most of the menu and hunt the rest of the menu,” Lee says. “We’ll milk cows in the morning to get the cream to make butter. We’ll get dairy cows from a local farm and finish them on the grain of the local brewery and the mash of the local olive oil mill.”
Lee is nothing if not ambitious. In 2017, when he was 30 years old, he told me he wanted to have “100 world-class restaurants” by the time he was 50. The pandemic slowed him down a bit, but the L.A. location of NADC Burger puts him at 30 restaurants, and he still thinks he’ll hit his lofty goal.
“I’m the same age Thomas Keller was when he took over The French Laundry, and you could argue that was the beginning of his career,” Lee says. “I’m going to be 39 on March 9, so I’m still young. I think I’ll probably surpass 100 restaurants by the time I’m 50. But I don’t think I’m doing it for the same reasons that made me want to do it before.”
All the success he’s had has motivated him in a more meaningful way.
“I’ve now gotten the stars and the TV and the accolades and the personal freedom to feel like I’ve ‘done it,’” Lee says. “But I think I now get off on different things. It used to be more ego-driven. Now I look around and see someone who comes on as a prep cook, moves all the way into executive chef in our company, has a child and gets a fully paid paternity or maternity leave. They’re getting a 401(k). I have cooks and bartenders buying houses. The more I grow, the more we grow.”
NADC Burger, located at 1091 Broxton Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90024, will be open seven days a week from 11:30 a.m. to midnight.
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Andy Wang
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