You never expect that the food you get at a restaurant will look quite as good as what you see in the advertisements, but at the new Tesla Diner in Los Angeles, even more modest expectations for its bacon may need to be tamped down. If you aren’t familiar with the Tesla Diner, it’s the robot-staffed brainchild of polarizing tech billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. It was conceived back in 2018 as a place where Tesla owners could stop and grab a bite while their cars charged outside.
After several years of construction, the new retro-futuristic diner opened on July 21, 2025, on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. Cars — mostly Teslas, obviously — lined up around the block. The reaction to the food itself has been a mixture of mildly positive to shoulder shrugs, but one of the more unique items on the menu has quickly become a source of ridicule online: the Epic Bacon.
Taking its name from Musk’s blandly-online sense of humor, the Epic Bacon is a $12 side consisting of four strips of bacon with a maple glaze, black pepper, and your choice of dipping sauce. On the menu, the four pieces tower over the serving container — but, as one Reddit user documented, the reality was very, very different. The photo they posted shows small, floppy pieces of bacon barely visible in the sleeve. As another social media user on Bluesky described it: “Tesla Epic Bacon looks like it was peeled off a Baconator then jammed in the small fries container that came with the combo meal.”
Tesla Diner’s food is okay, but the prices are high
The small size of the bacon would be a little easier to swallow if the price weren’t so high. It’s at least made with high-quality Baker’s Bacon, a small-batch brand that uses heritage breed pork. The rest of the menu is similarly expensive, although some of that could just be L.A. pricing. A chili dog with fried potatoes will run you $16 before adding a drink, while a ⅓-pound smashburger without fries will be $13.50.
The menu has other classic foods that always taste better at a diner than they do at home, including a tuna melt, but is surprisingly limited, with only six breakfast options and six sandwiches. Some of the other more unique offerings include “charged sodas,” which come in flavors such as Creamsicle and Lime Rickey, and are meant as an homage to the old-school phosphates – a sour ingredient perfect for balancing drinks that used to be served at many soda shops and diners.
Outside the Epic Bacon debacle, reviews have been as mixed as Musk’s reputation. Eater described the Biscuits and Red Gravy as “fairly excellent,” while noting that the burger was dry. In an X post, a reviewer from Wired described the hot dog as having a “rubbery texture and taste.” The restaurateurs behind the Tesla Diner have real cred, though, with links to some of Los Angeles’s best restaurants, including Bestia and République. So, while the food isn’t quite living up to expectations (or the price), the veterans at the helm might eventually work out the kinks.
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