I’m something of a shameless hussy when it comes to cheeseburgers. When the craving knocks, the sight, smell or sound of them cooking on a grill compels cues capable of pulling me away from hoity-toity gourmet meals.

Aside from their obvious flavor attributes, hamburgers for me ooze nostalgia – beckoning back to those exciting childhood visits to McDonald’s that my parents tightly controlled, and then later rising to grill master at backyard “burgercues” that I threw for friends in my early teens.

My love of burgers, however, isn’t unconditional. I’ve grown weary of the mystery beef used in fast-food joints. I detest when the cheese isn’t melted, or even worse, when it is firmer than some of the sickly lettuce-tomato-onion fixings I often encounter, and which get slapped into the scheme with careless abandon.

Burger Lounge in Kensington (and La Jolla) avoids those missteps. For starters, the diner-like eatery uses a local bakery’s chubby, molasses-kissed buns made mostly of wheat flour. The beef originates from a farm in Kansas, where the cattle are grass-fed and spared the usual injections of antibiotics and hormones. The cheese (cheddar or American) is given time to partially liquefy over the patties before they’re popped off the flat grill. And the garnishes are fresh and sturdy.

Bingo!

Burger Lounge’s concept is fast food sans any processed gunk, leaving me to suspect that Sysco trucks don’t venture here. The concise menu features a couple of salads – Caesar or fresh vegetable. My companion and I chose the latter dressed in avocado-Ranch, but with a side of lemon-basil vinaigrette to sample. Both dressings are made in-house and jived fantastically with an impressive medley of center-section romaine leaves, daikon sprouts, vine-ripe tomatoes, red onions, aged ricotta and roasted corn lopped straight off the cob. It’s one of the brightest and snazziest salads I’ve eaten at a casual eatery in years.

Burger choices are kept simple, but cover all the bases: beef, turkey or vegetarian, each weighing in at six ounces and patted out semi thinly. We tried all three.

The beef “lounge burger” was expectedly tasty, although its grass-fed quality offers more psychological solace than it does discernible flavor compared to other top-quality hamburger meat. The patty nonetheless escaped that skanky fried taste afflicting cheaper grades of beef when they hit the griddle. The hearty buns, fresh fixings, house-made Thousand Island dressing and melted cheese ultimately raise the pedestal.

Fresh basil is embedded in the turkey burgers. They’re made of white and dark meat that is finely ground, presenting us with a difficult toss up when trying to determine which burger we liked better. The lack of herbs or seasoning in turkey burgers at other restaurants is what often keeps me lusting after beef. Here, the basil does wonders for pinching up the normally bland flavor of turkey, supported also by the aforementioned toppings of our beef burger.

The restaurant’s vegetarian burger is also noteworthy because it exceeds the hackneyed fake-meat flavor of mass-produced Garden Burgers. This house-made recipe doesn’t try tricking you. It is what it is – a satisfying and downright earthy admixture of quinoa, brown rice, zucchini, mushrooms, carrots, garlic and chipotle peppers bound by a smidgen of Jack cheese.

Straight from the deep fryer are onion rings and chicken tenders breaded in light panko crumbs, plus twice-fried French fries made of low-starch Kennebeck potatoes that I hoped would taste like those sold by street vendors in central European cities I’ve visited. Served in a tall-standing, white cardboard take-out box, they were pretty all-American tasting due mainly to our country’s disdain for using oils containing animal fat.

The hefty chicken tenders sing better to the peanut oil used in the kitchen. They’re skewered on thick wood sticks and come five to an order. Served alongside was Ranch dressing and a somewhat watery, but tangy barbecue sauce, both of which we abandoned merely because the crisp buttermilk-dipped tenders stood grandly on their own.

In keeping with the everything-homemade theme, the wife of co-owner Dean Loring bangs out a variety of cupcakes from her own kitchen each day. We tried one made of espresso-chocolate cake that was filled with vanilla cream and frosted in non-canned chocolate frosting – no less decadent than a chocolate milk shake we split constructed with high-butterfat ice cream and a splash of whole milk.

The atmosphere at Burger Lounge is friendly and intimate, with only a 50-seat capacity inside that yields to a few dozen more seats on the sidewalk patio. We sat at the lunch counter to better soak up the neighborhood feel. Service is efficient, and for this burger-loving consumer, perhaps as dangerously fast as McDonald’s and Burger King.