Please wait till the last word until you run off to get a cheeseburger, that most American of meaty, gooey goodness, born in no other place but Pasadena.
The cheeseburger, turning a venerable 100 years old this month, will get its own week Jan. 21-27, with the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce introducing a Cheeseburger Passport this year to commemorate the occasion, complete with collectable stamps and prizes.
Visit Pasadena is offering cheeseburgers included in hotel stays, a cheeseburger walking tour and specials at participating restaurants.
“The cheeseburger is truly the great unifier of American cuisine, and we are so excited to bring our tourism partners together to commemorate the cheeseburger’s 100th anniversary right here in Pasadena,” said Kristin McGrath, executive director of Visit Pasadena. “Celebrate the sensation of cheeseburger’s genesis in its hometown, where we’ve prepared a month of delicious cheeseburger joy for all to savor.”
Food lore has it that Lionel Clark Sternberger was working at his father’s roadside burger joint when “at the hungry age of 16, (he) experimentally dropped a slab of American cheese on a sizzling hamburger while helping out at his father’s sandwich shop in Pasadena, thereby inventing the cheeseburger.”
A black-and-white photo from the archives of the Pasadena Museum of History shows a bespectacled, aproned elderly gentleman in a newsboy cap standing in front of The Rite Spot, the birthplace of said cheeseburger, which stood on the southwest corner of Colorado Boulevard and Avenue 64, near the Colorado Bridge.
Called the “Aristocratic Burger: The Original Hamburger with Cheese,” the first cheeseburger was offered on the menu for the princely sum of .15 cents. (The roadside stand also sold cigarettes, candy, chocolate malteds and ginger ale.)
The Rite Spot eventually grew into a brick-and-mortar steakhouse that continued to serve Aristocratic Burgers, using Davidson’s Kansas City corn-fed…
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