Amy ScattergoodIf you like cheeseburgers, and I mean really like cheeseburgers, you should probably just get a hotel room in Pasadena next week. Assuming you don't live here already, which you might if you're a true cheeseburger fanatic, simply because the dish was reportedly invented here (1920s, Lionel Sternberger, The Rite Spot) by a teenager at his dad's burger stand. To commemorate said event, the city of Pasadena is hosting its second annual Cheeseburger Week, from Jan. 13-18. Because if you have an excuse to eat cheeseburgers for a week, and a good one at that, why not capitalize on it.
Sponsored by the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce, Cheeseburger Week is also part of California's Restaurant Month and Pasadena Restaurant Week, and will include not only a Cheeseburger Challenge (vote for your favorites) but a Cheeseburger Crawl (eat an insane amount of beef and cheese). (Look at all the CAPS! That means it's all Very Important!)
Among the restaurants enabling taking part in the event are Vertical Wine Bistro, Umami Burger, Haven Gastropub, The Counter, Pie 'n Burger and King's Row Gastropub, which designed the Mars Rover Burger to honor all the nearby JPL engineers who doubtless eat a great deal of burgers while looking at Mars and playing with their gadgets.
(So what IS a Mars Rover Burger? No, you don't have to ask a Caltech guy with a Whyville spectrometer or whatever to figure it out, although that would be fun. It's a burger of ground ribeye and chorizo topped with a fried egg, cilantro aioli, pepperjack cheese and arugula. On a bun. Ta-da.)
For a complete list of participating restaurants, and details of all the crazy fun stuff you can do before lapsing into a caloric stupor, go to pasadenarestaurantweek.com.
See also:
10 Best Burgers in Los Angeles
The Underrated Burger Smackdown: Brick + Mortar Vs. The Original Tops
A Salute to Burgers in Los Angeles
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