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You Can Haz Cheezeburger at Pasadena's Cheeseburger Week
The Original Tops is one of the participating venues in Pasadena's second annual Cheeseburger Week (Photo courtesy The Original Tops)
All these food holidays and restaurant weeks can get overwhelming, but this is one we can get behind. Pasadena is starting their second annual cheeseburger week next Monday, meaning you can stuff yourself with buns and burgs all you want -- and on the cheap.
The organizers say the event is a celebration of Lionel Sternberger’s genius in being the first to put cheese to hamburger and serve it at the Rite Spot in Pasadena in 1924. In honor of the event, they've organized several different themed cheeseburger crawls: there's a traditional crawl that includes Pie 'N Burger, Continental, the original Tops location, and Clearman's, as well as a more fancy pants one that goes from aka to Pop Champagne to Vertical Wine Bistro to redwhiteandbluez.
If all that sounds like too much, you can always just hit up some of the specials like Pie 'N Burger's $10.95 cheeseburger, fries, and a soft drink deal. Or maybe the Mars Rover-inspired burger over at King's Rows is more up your alley.
"I thought doing a tribute to Pasadena's history of innovation with a burger would be a fun way to approach Cheeseburger Week," says executive chef Sundeep Vohra. "Since JPL just landed the Opportunity on Mars, we came up with a tasty burger made from dry aged ribeye beef, ground chorizo for a bit of fire, topped with an egg, arugula and some interesting flavors on our housemade bun and dubbed it the Mars Rover Burger."
We're not really quite sure what that has to do with Mars, save for the fact that chorizo is sort of red-ish, but it sure sounds good.
For more info on who's participating in Pasadena's beefy festivities, check out their site. And if you really get into it, be sure to vote for your favorite burger. There are traditional lunch counter, alternative, and white tablecloth categories this year.
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