Fair Oaks Burger

"Moments of quietude are rare at Fair Oaks Burger, Altadena’s 37-year-old fast-food restaurant and community hub. Even during mid-afternoon lulls when the dining room rush eases, sizzling sounds from a blistering hot wok still emanate from the kitchen while drive-thru speakers crackle with the hungry voices of customers. Ad-free oldies radio plays from speakers mounted in the restaurant’s yellow walls. Soon, a pair of customers swing through the glass doors, resuming the flow of familiar faces inside. Operated by sisters Janet and Christy Lee, Fair Oaks Burger sits in a square building with a flat roof and a red-and-white striped awning on the corner of Fair Oaks Avenue and East Calaveras Street. Its front patio faces a busy boulevard overlooking a pizza place, a popular liquor store, and a funeral home across the way. Before JJ and Sunny Lee, Janet and Christy’s parents, bought the restaurant in the late ’80s, it housed a short-lived branch of the Midwest fast-food chain White Castle, famous for its bite-sized cheeseburger sliders with more than 300 locations dotting mostly east of the Mississippi. White Castle never caught on among Californians. “People don’t like little burgers,” says Janet with a wry smile. (Eater could not confirm the former location was a White Castle.) After its short run as a White Castle, the building was converted into an outpost of Louisiana Fried Chicken before the Lees purchased it and opened Fair Oaks Burger in 1987. The elder Lees were entrepreneurs who flipped restaurants, says Janet, buying and fixing them up and then selling them at a profit once the business became more successful. Janet and Christy’s parents owned multiple places around town, including a spot in Downtown Los Angeles no bigger than 300 square feet that sold fresh juices and premade sandwiches. In 2007, the elder Lees left the care of Fair Oaks Burger in their daughters’ hands after a decade of ownership outside the family. The restaurant initially served only Mexican food and hamburgers, but when customers asked for Chinese food, the Lees expanded the menu to meet their needs. As new dishes were added over time, prices were intentionally kept affordable so that “everyone can have the same experience,” says Janet. While many regulars grab their food to-go, a good portion of customers settle into the restaurant’s wooden tables set with napkin dispensers, soy sauce, and a medley of hot sauces. The large menu at Fair Oaks Burgers, which now features classic American and Chinese foods along with its original Mexican and fast-food standbys, attracts different palates for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Regulars — a mix of outdoorsy types (hikers, mountain bikers), young parents (dads in high-vis vests holding sleepy babies and moms with kids in tow), solo eaters, and workers on a lunch break — line up at the front counter made of cemented bricks topped with a large wood slat. People waiting in line commonly chat with each other or with diners already sitting about the goings-on in the community or, most popularly, the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Lee sisters introduced the Dodger burger made with double beef patties, a hot link, chili, and cheese to appeal to the baseball team’s legion of local fans. Fair Oaks’ namesake burger sources its beef from a butcher in Koreatown and is generously layered with avocado, bacon, cheese, and jalapeños. A veggie cheeseburger is almost a facsimile of its beef counterpart, made with a store-bought patty between fixings and served on a toasted bun wrapped tightly in yellow paper. The restaurant’s reliably compact burritos come with rice, beans, cheese, onions, tomato, cilantro, and a choice of carne asada, chicken, or no meat at all. A Chinese chicken salad has crispy wontons and a tangy sauce; a popular fried zucchini side can also manifest as a topping for things like the pastrami burger or be the filling in a taco. Some other popular dishes, like menudo and curry, can only be found as addendums on printer paper taped to the counter or drive-thru menu. Many locals can’t recall their lives in Altadena without regular visits to Fair Oaks Burger. The convivial energy is similar to the old television show Cheers, says Janet, as she and her employees know customers’ names and orders by heart, and regulars often swap personal anecdotes with those behind the counter. Longtime patrons introduce themselves to first-timers, while veteran employees are quick to bring every diner into the fold. The community-minded ethos extends to pets as well, with dogs treated to unseasoned chicken when going through the drive-thru and sometimes even featured on the restaurant’s Instagram account. On the north side of Fair Oaks Burger, just before the drive-thru window that came in clutch during the early days of the pandemic and facing the majestic San Gabriel mountains that turn orange and purple as the sun sets, is a painted mural of a tall burger. The various fixings, from sesame-seed bun to meat patties and cheese, spell out the restaurant’s mission in colorful and capital letters: “Altadena Fair Oaks Burger. Come for the Food. Stay for the Friends.” That’s what a neighborhood restaurant is all about." - Alice Wynne