Phillip Frankland Lee Brings the NADC Burger to Los Angeles

Chef Phillip Frankland Lee moved from Los Angeles to Austin during the Covid-19 crisis, but there wasn’t much of a chance he was leaving California.

Lee, who grew up in Los Angeles, continues to work Sushi by Scratch Restaurants. The Montecito location has earned a Michelin star for 2021, and Sushi by Scratch is also going strong at its locations in Encino and SLS Beverly Hills. Lee keeps pushing hard at Encino Pasta Bar, which has had a Michelin Star for five years in a row and was shown on Apple TV Knife Edge series last year. (In 2025, Lee and his brother, Lennon, make history (being the first siblings to receive a Michelin star in different US restaurants in the same year.)

And now he’s back in LA to remind his hometown that he’s also a master at creating casual meals. On Friday, February 27, Lee and skateboarder Neen Williams will open NADC Burger’s Los Angeles’ first location in Westwood, near the UCLA campus.

NADC, short for Not a Damn Chance, is a wagyu burger joint that Lee and Williams already operate in Austin, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Fort Worth, Denver, Charlotte and Nashville. The menu is straightforward and formal, with double wagyu cheeseburgers and beef tallow.

NADC has become a household name, with celebrities, and clients including David Beckham and Zedd. Jelly Roll, who has declared NADC’s burger to be the best he’s ever had, loves it so much that he serves it at his place. Goodnight Nashville the honky-tonk. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck recently appeared at the NADC in Austin and headed to Lee’s youth Shokunin a sushi restaurant.

“I think what sets us apart at NADC is that I run like I run Pasta or Sushi,” Lee told the Observer. “I look very closely at every aspect when we create a burger.”

There’s American cheese, a secret sauce (a ketchup and mayonnaise base enhanced with Tabasco and “secret little notes to make it extra yummy”), onions, a generous amount of pickles and “slightly mild” jalapeños that are boiled before being pickled. American wagyu beef with Japanese heritage. And when each 3-ounce patty comes off the griddle, it goes into a resting zone with a 90-second timer so the juices settle and the excess fat melts. This is the precision cooking that came out of Lee’s backyard hanging out 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 Sushi by Scratch counter when he met Lee.

“I was already a fan of his because I grew up skateboarding,” said Lee. “He was by himself, and I always talk to everybody, he’s like, ‘Yeah, I like to cook.’ I said, ‘Okay, she’s beautiful.’ Then he shows me a picture of his backyard where he has a 12-meter stone fireplace that he built himself. I’d say, ‘Oh, you really cook.’

Lee and Williams started hanging out a lot, skateboarding together, dating their wives and cooking together.

“We made a lot of pigs and meat in the fire,” said Lee. “And one thing we did a lot of was burgers.”

Lee had just returned from Bangkok, where he had been working at a sushi restaurant and burger joint that was closed due to the pandemic. So he was in the mood to make burgers, and he and Williams began handing out burgers at Austin skateparks and comedy shows. That led to a 2022 pop-up and, in 2023, NADC’s first brick-and-mortar location.

The success of NADC created a Not an Amazing Chance! a podcastwith 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 does well in tournaments. And to use the word gambling, he’s been in a bit of a rush, opening restaurant after restaurant.

Lee had no intentions of moving to Austin when he went there in 2020 for a sushi pop-up. But after realizing that the pop-up was selling out with a waiting list of 25,000 people, he kept it going month after 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 for himself in Texas, where he is currently working on creating his current flagship project. He acquired four acres in the Hill Country, about half an hour from Austin, where he plans to own a farm, lodge and restaurant with aspirations of three Michelin stars and 50 World’s Best recognition.

“We’ll grow or harvest most of the menu and hunt the rest of the menu,” Lee said. “We will milk the cows in the morning for the cream to make butter. We will get dairy cows from a local farm and finish them off with grain from a local brewery and a local mill for olive oil.”

Lee is nothing if not determined. In 2017, when he was 30 years old, he told me that he wanted to have “100 world-class restaurants” by the time he was 50. The pandemic slowed him down a bit, but NADC Burger’s LA location puts him at 30 restaurants, and he still thinks he’ll hit his lofty goal.

“I’m the same age as Thomas Keller when he took over the French laundry, and you could argue that was the beginning of his career,” Lee said. “I’ll be 39 on March 9, so I’m still young. I think I’ll be over 100 restaurants by the time I’m 50. But I don’t think I’m doing it for the same reasons I wanted to do it before.”

Every success he has had has motivated him in a meaningful way.

“Now I have stars and TV and acclaim and the personal freedom to feel like I’ve ‘made it,'” Lee said. “But I think now I’m getting down to different things. It used to be driven by selfishness. Now I look around and see someone come in who is the head chef at our company, has a child and gets full or full paid maternity leave. They get a 401(k). I have chefs and real estate agents, that’s where I 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.