The Peanut Butter Burger

Next to the tourist favorite, Pat O'Briens, the inconspicuous storefront of Yo Mama's on St Peters is easily overlooked. The worn bar and comfortable wooden booths of this French Quarter institution make you feel like a local. The friendly servers, especially Leyla, reminded me of one of the reasons I love New Orleans. Even if you are not a local, you treated as if you were at least a regular.



The menu is mainly burgers, with a few hot sandwiches and salads. All of their burgers are 1/2 pounders and run about ten bucks. There is a quarter pound burger for 5.75 and a mega one pound burger for 13.75. I like foods with the word mega in the name. We were immediately excited by burger #8

Peanut Butter Burger with baked potato or side salad. Top your burger with peanut butter and bacon

Before you freak out, think about it. It has already been established that bacon and peanut butter are an odd but successful pairing. And you've had beef satay with peanut butter sauce, haven't you? You know I ordered it. And it was fantastic!!! I ordered my burger medium, so the peanut butter didn't melt and caramelize around the burger the way Leyla said it does on her well-done burger. Covered with a mountain of chopped smoky bacon, it is one of the best burgers in the world.



The huge fully loaded baked potato will also be popping up in my carb-laden fantasies as I go back to a sensible diet.

Other burgers on the menu that piqued our curiosity are the "Bullfighter"

Topped with avocado, jalapenos and salsa

and the "Burger Romanoff"

Sour cream and caviar make this very rich



Umm I have a note on the menu that this is Tim and Leyla, then there are a bunch of chicken scratches...so sorry third guy, I don't have your name. It appears I wrote "Smarp up Pither A ! 3" and that just can't be right.

Pie 'n Burger

I have been hearing about Pie 'n Burger for some time now. In the same location since 1963, it often receives votes for the best burger in LA and is known for its strawberry pie. In fact, Pie 'n Burger has been around so long that its diet plate of a burger patty, peach slices and cottage cheese has actually come into vogue again.

Today I finally had a meeting in Pasadena, not a quarter mile away from the place. Pie 'n Burger appears to be an unassuming little box from the outside, but once inside, you are transported back in time to a little old-fashioned California coffee shop, circa Nick at Nite. When the friendly waitress asked me what I wanted, I said, "Well, I guess I better have a pie n burger." She laughed gaily, as if I was the first person who had ever said such a thing. I was placing my order to go, but when she rattled off a list of about twenty-five different kinds of pie, my mind was blown. I thought, "Well, I'd better get a slice for my husband too". And when I thought about a slice of blueberry pie, it seemed like a sin to have it un a la mode, which would not have traveled well. So I did what I tend to do when faced with a wide array of choices - I ordered one old standard - banana cream pie, plus something daring - butterscotch. Then I asked for a slice of blueberry pie, heated, a la mode, to eat while I waited for them to cook my burger.

They asked me how I wanted my burger cooked, which was refreshing in this age of "always-cook-the hell-out-of-it-to avoid-food-poisoning". They grill their onions, so I asked for onions, ketchup and mayo. Burgers come standard with big leaves of iceberg lettuce, pickles, and thousand island dressing, so I went with it.

When my pie arrived, it could not have looked better tied with a giant bow. The flaky crust was fairly bursting with blueberries, and the entire pie was collapsing from the weight of two massive scoops of ice cream. The filling was especially sweet, and needed the balance of the cool vanilla ice cream. As I ate my pie, I chatted with the charming waitress. I liked the way her eyes shone when she talked about candy. Her slight Texas accent and wide-eyed charm, coupled with the old formica counter transported me back to a time and place when things were simpler. Not the actual, olden days when everything actually kind of sucked for most people, but an imaginary, romanticized "good old days" like you see on TV. As I dug into my purse for dollar bills to pay for the spontaneous added expense of three slices of pie, the waitress said, "That's OK if you don't have it." I did, but talk about the halcyon days of yore!

When I got home, the burger had cooled, but that did not affect its deliciousness in the least. It was dripping with a delicious, messy mix of condiments, the patty was charred and juicy, and the crunchy lettuce and sweet pickle made me kind of nostalgic. I don't remember the bun at all. I scarfed it down too fast to even notice. It wasn't memorable, which is maybe what the bun should be - just a vehicle for getting all of the other stuff into your mouth.

The cream pies were the worse for wear from the trip home. About and hour and a half after leaving the restaurant, the butterscotch pie had started to melt into a pool of unappetizing syrup. The banana cream pie held up better, but was more sweet than flavorful. Plus, I'm not big on meringue on cream pies - just my personal preference. So I would say, go for the hamburgers, go for the fruit pies, and definitely go for the good service and ambiance. If I lived nearby, Pie 'n Burger would probably be my home away from home.

They also serve breakfast. Oh, and as an added bonus, Pie n Burger has a wine shop in back. You can buy a bottle of wine or champagne and open it at your table to enjoy with your dinner. Might I suggest a nice Zinfandel to go with your chili size, and how about a Syrah for the rhubarb pie? Pie'n Burger 913 E. California Blvd. Cash and checks only. http://www.pienburger.com/index.htm

Ode to the Glory that is Burbank: Bob's

I know Burbank has gotten its share of grief, from everyone from the late Johnny Carson to yours truly. Burbank's "downtown" area is one big mess of chain everything. The remainder of Burbank is a quiet wasteland of well-tended front yards and moribund shopfronts. It is a town populated by a strange mix of senior citizens and blue-collar workers from the studios (The real studio players live over the hill, or increasingly in Studio City, Toluca Lake and Sherman Oaks). It makes for an interesting demographic. One of the beauties of neglected neighborhoods is that many of the old places and signs that would normally have been torn down to make way for Starbucks survive.

Here are some of Burbank's gems:


1. Oldest surviving Bob's Big Boy.

When we had a Bob's Big Boy in every neighborhood, I always thought of it like Denny's. It was just another chain joint where I could smoke, drink coffee, and read beatnik literature. There were no coffeehouses in the 80s. Not outside of Greenwich Village, anyways. Bob's Big Boy served that purpose, and on the more lurid side, it also had waiters that dealt cocaine. It was the 80s after all.

It wasn't until I started getting into restaurant forums that I discovered the collective nostalgia for Bob's, which has nearly disappeared off the national map. Here in Burbank, we have the oldest surviving Bob's Big Boy. As a bonus, it was designed by architect Wayne McCallister and foreshadows the coming googie style. People often wonder about the mysterious neon number 49 that glows on the front wall. It is simply the year the restaurant opened: 1949.






The current owners, who bought the restaurant in 1993, have reinstated carhop service on Friday and Saturday nights. But the real star here is the Super Big Boy Combo, a study in nostalgia. They start you off with a shockingly crisp iceberg lettuce salad topped with one of their their thick, creamy house dressings. The salad is followed by the classic cheeseburger-fries-coke combination. Some people claim that Bob's invented the very first double-decker burger for this combo. It vaguely resembles a Big Mac, with a strange chow-chow-like relish, super-soft bun and superthin patties. But somehow it is greater than the sum of its parts. Sprinkle some of the house seasoning salt on your fries, and eavesdrop on all of the old people as they stop at each other's tables to inquire, "How did the blood tests go?"