A legendary Cayucos hole in the wall is revived

July 2, 2025

Editor’s Note: The following series, “Life in Radically Gentrifying Cayucos by the Sea,” to be posted biweekly includes the notes, thoughts, and opinions of an original American voice: author Dell Franklin. 

Franklin’s memoir, “The ballplayer’s Son” and “Life on The Mississippi, 1969” are currently on Amazon.

Ahh, the aroma of burgers on a grill! Nothing like it as it wafts along the beach wall and commingles with the scent of sea salt and fresh marine air. I’m talking about the new burger joint that opened up in the tiny hut behind the liquor store in downtown Cayucos just off the parking lot where surfers congregate in their pickups and vans.

This tiny hut became legendary when ace chef Adam Pollard opened the first Taco Temple, a joint that created a unique aroma so overpowering that lines of patrons formed clear out in the street and had to avoid cars poking through.

Then, after the Taco Temple moved to a bigger venue in Morro Bay, Jim Rudell opened the Smokehouse over twenty years ago and, with its unique flavors of smoked salmon and albacore,  became an establishment so renown that people ordered his creations from as far away as back east and fans from the LA area drove 200 plus miles to make it a day chowing down on Jim’s tacos.

The Smokehouse kind of put Cayucos on the map.

And yes, the aromas were hellacious and the lines often clogged the road and nobody was unhappy waiting a half hour to devour Jim’s Louisiana-bred creations at the sea wall. He was so busy he hired bands to serenade his customers on weekends.

Now there’s a totally different aroma, a kind of national symbol close to the heart of all Americans, the simple hamburger from an old-fashioned, totally authentic hole-in-the wall. Not McDonald’s, Burger King, IN ‘N OUT, Wendy’s, or any of the other chain establishments landscaping America’s bloated shopping centers and billboard dotted boulevards and highways.

Growing up in Southern California as a youth was to live in a burger mecca. In Compton, my hometown, there was a burger joint next to the high school, downtown, on Long Beach and Atlantic boulevards. A Carl’s Jr. opened up in Orange County and became a destination, their burgers holding an addictive secret sauce. Five years later the burger was pedestrian, the sauce gone, and Carl’s Jr. was everywhere.

Try and find an authentic, individually owned, old-fashioned burger joint anywhere these days. Well, Cayucos, a place with a hanging-on-for-dear-life character, now has Mosey’s Burgers, a locally owned enterprise, and unlike past failures in between booming successes at the tiny hut, the joint is hopping.

Like there is an urgent hunger for a burger joint. Like rabid meat eaters still abound in a tiny burg going health precious and effete as it gentrifies.

Like there is nothing like biting into a good burger and feeling the grease and juices drip down your chin and smear your face and slather your hands. Burger eating is happy time. Is it good for you? Who cares!

So here in Cayucos the legendary hole-in-the-wall brings us burgers utterly unique and, frankly, wonderful! I’ve heard they’re called “Smash Burgers.”

Well, I consider myself a connoisseur of burgers, having devoured them like a starving dog since childhood, and all I can say is that I attacked Mosey’s double burger with cheese like a ravenous wolf who’d been deprived nutrition while scavenging in the woods for days.

Inside, the decor is clean and compact. Four short red stools that look to have been uprooted from a 1950s soda fountain sit along a cozy nook. One wall smacks of a simple Beach Boys, nautical ambiance.

Outside are two tables and stools. The place was a beehive on a mid-noon Wednesday. There is among locals and even longtime tourists from the Valley a palpable excitement about the new burger joint.

Will it become a destination? I think so. People will come. Burgers are in our DNA. Especially in small town America.