This month marks the 100th anniversary when a restaurant along future Route 66 in Pasadena, California, reputedly introduced the cheeseburger.
The Rite Spot restaurant in the 1500 block of West Colorado Boulevard offered an “Original Hamburger with Cheese” for 15 cents in January 1924, according to the Pasadena Convention and Visitors Bureau.
As the tale goes, H.S. Sternberger and his twin sons Van and Lionel came to Pasadena in 1916 from San Diego. 16-year-old Lionel Clark Sternberger was working his dad’s restaurant at the southwest corner of Colorado Boulevard and Avenue 64 as a short-order cook. On one fateful day in 1924, he introduced cheese to patty in one of two ways. We can’t be sure which one is true, but they ended up calling it the “Aristocratic Burger: the Original Hamburger with Cheese.”
Cheesy Cover-up Story: Lionel was flipping burgers when he accidentally burnt a patty on the grill. To mask the mistake, he slapped a slice of cheese to conceal the scorch.
Cheesy Customer Story: An ingenious customer simply asked for the cheese to be placed in their burger.
The Pasadena Museum of History owns a copy of The Rite Spot’s menu as evidence. When Sternberger died in 1964, Time magazine also reported him as the inventor of the cheeseburger.
The Pasadena Chamber of Commerce in 2017 dedicated a plaque to the spot where the cheeseburger reportedly was invented.
More about the saga can be viewed in this video:
It should be noted, however, the restaurant reputedly introduced the sandwich almost three years before U.S. 66 was federally certified in November 1926.
Alas, The Rite Spot has been gone for many years. A credit union now stands in its place.
This month in commemoration of the centennial, seven hotels in Pasadena will give overnight customers a free cheeseburger.
A restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, claims to be the originator of the cheeseburger. However, that one is documented as starting in 1934 — a full decade after The Rite Spot.
(Image of a Carl’s Drive-In cheeseburger in Brentwood, Missouri, via its Facebook account)
“I will gladly pay you on Tuesday for a cheeseburger today!”