Bob’s Big Boy, Burbank, California

I am feeling a little guilty since today is my baby’s 11th birthday and I am on my way to IFBC in Seattle. It is bad enough that he started middle school 3 days ago and thinks that he it all grown up, sometimes, but now I’m going to miss his birthday.  Dad was in charge of the birthday party planning and that put the fear of god into him. He went about making other plans. A man’s weekend. Dad is packing up the boys and heading to the Salmon River in Riggins, Idaho for a weekend of white-water rafting, camping and beer drinking man time.  No mom allowed.  I guess I will just have to deal with it, I hope Salumi and Delancey can help me

You can either go big or go home.

That is what Andreas was thinking as we were waltzing through the side streets of Burbank, California.  We checked into our fantastic little motel, yes, I said motel (that’s a story for another post), and headed out for a self-guided walking tour.  Everywhere we went people apologized for the heat wave, but it felt like home to us. This is southern California, isn’t it suppose to be hot in July?

News Flash: boys get hungry often.

Our eldest boy had been at a nerd camp at Cal Lutheran for 3 weeks and we had flown down a day before we were to pick him up.  The youngest, pictured above, had been missing his brother something terrible.  We were all dying to get the boys back together.  I for one was a little tired of playing Star Wars, I am not so good with a light saber!  With the mindset of keeping the high-maintenance boy happy we were out for a walk.  That is when we happened upon a bottle store and my husband had to pop in, just in case, his favorite rum, that is not sold stateside, might be waiting for him.  No such luck.  Big surprise.  That is when it happened.

That is when Big Boy waved us in.  He has been standing there since 1949.  That is a long time to hold up that burger.  I think it was my husband, hoping for a little of the Americana nostalgia that he missed out on growing up in southern Africa, who steered us towards this big beauty.  As a child his parents NEVER took them to any kind of burger joint.  They only ate at proper restaurants, not that there were any drive-ins in southern Africa.  Time to make up for lost time and burgers?

We had the greatest waitress, straight out of Alice, I swear.  I know this isn’t Mel’s diner, but the name badge on our waitress’s declared Flo to be her name (she was even chewing gum).  It was perfect!  The food was just as you might expect, but it was the whole experience that made it remarkable.  I cautioned the men not to eat too much, we were meeting our friends 100Miles, MyLastBite, and ClimbingLA for dinner later at Canele.  They devoured a Big Boy Burger, a kid’s burger, fries, milkshakes and an order of not quite done onion rings.  We had our fill and headed back out into the blistering sunshine…

Happy Birthday to my BIG BOY, Andreas

BOB’s BIG BOY
4211 W Riverside Dr
Burbank, CA 91505
(818) 843-9334

print this recipe

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts