photo courtesy: Pasadena Chamber of Commerce

Kings Row Mars Rover cheeseburger

If you like cheeseburgers, and I mean really like cheeseburgers, you should probably just get a hotel room in Pasadena next week. Assuming you don't live here already, which you might if you're a true cheeseburger fanatic, simply because the dish was reportedly invented here (1920s, Lionel Sternberger, The Rite Spot) by a teenager at his dad's burger stand. To commemorate said event, the city of Pasadena is hosting its second annual Cheeseburger Week, from Jan. 13-18. Because if you have an excuse to eat cheeseburgers for a week, and a good one at that, why not capitalize on it.

Sponsored by the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce, Cheeseburger Week is also part of California's Restaurant Month and Pasadena Restaurant Week, and will include not only a Cheeseburger Challenge (vote for your favorites) but a Cheeseburger Crawl (eat an insane amount of beef and cheese). (Look at all the CAPS! That means it's all Very Important!)

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Courtesy Juicy Lucy

The Juicy Lucy burger, milkshake and sriracha cheese fries

Juicy Lucy, the burger spot from chef Paul Shoemaker, is officially open to the public today after a week of soft-opening service. Shoemaker, who recently closed his Malibu restaurant Savory, hopes the popularity of the burger on Savory's menu will translate to a successful burger-centric business model that can eventually become a chain of Juicy Lucys.

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B. Rodell

Brick + Mortar's burger on the left, the TOPS Special on the right

Los Angeles has plenty of much-hyped burgers. Some would say we have quite a few over-hyped burgers. But we're also a city of relatively unknown burgers, some of them deserving of their own notoriety. It was with this in mind that we set out to find the city's most underrated burger, with your help.

First, we asked for nominations for Los Angeles' most underrated burger. Then, after narrowing down the competition, we held a poll to determine which burgers should be considered for the ultimate title. The two burgers with the most votes earned the right to go on to the finals, which consisted of a taste test by yours truly. Turn the page for the final results of the underrated burger smackdown.

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gabriel amadeus via flickrtd>

We need your vote! Not that vote (although you ARE voting today, right? RIGHT???) -- another vote, one with a winner that may not change the course of the country, but will change the fortunes of one lucky burger...

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G. Snyder

"The Classic" at Burger Lounge

L.A. is a burger town. We fetishize the burger perhaps more than any other city in the country, and we have plenty of burgers that have attained cult status. And while some of those burgers might be a tad overrated, we're not interested in that for right now. Instead, we'd like to know about the unsung burgers -- the burgers that deserve cult status but have been bypassed for some reason by the burger-eating hordes.

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GuzzleandNosh

The Hickoryburger at Apple Pan

Celebrating this year's Best of L.A. issue -- now out in print and online -- we're counting down, in no particular order, 100 of our favorite dishes.

27: The Hickoryburger at Apple Pan

Los Angeles' burger boom, in many ways, owes much to this humble onion-scented lunchroom, a place that stands out among the development along Pico Blvd. like Carl Fredricksen's house in Up. The Apple Pan has been around since 1947, and it's still cash only, with bills being exchanged out of a dusty antique register.

There are two burgers on the menu, both of the old-school, paper-wrapped, lettuce-intensive variety: the standard Steakburger and the Hickoryburger. They're more or less the same burger, the difference being that the latter is slathered with a tart, sweet, smoky sauce that falls somewhere in between ketchup and Kansas City barbecue sauce.

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Courtesy Umami Burger

Umami Burger's Pasadena location opened yesterday, making it the 14th location of the chain -- if you count Umamicatessen. The original opening date had been slated for Oct. 17, but it seems that the restaurant took a little longer than expected to come together.

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G. Snyder

Mayer Hawthorne with burger in hand

If you're someone who subscribes to the theory that food is the new rock, then you might have see last Wednesday night as a watershed moment. Umami Burger, the L.A.-based gourmet burger chain that's set to open it's thirteenth location next week, released the first of what it's calling its "artist-exclusive burgers."

The idea of designing menu items around musicians isn't new -- back in 2008 Denny's infamously introduced a list of "rockstar" menu items including a Katy Perry-themed "Hot 'N' Cold Cherry Chocolate Cappuccino" and a "Hooburrito," a chicken strip and cheese sauce-filled abomination inspired by Hoobastank. (Apparently it did to your small intestine what their music did to your ears.) But the slicked-out Umami Burger franchise is no Denny's, of course, and you can be sure that when these burger-marketing gurus pick an artist to design a burger around, it's going to be one with plenty of hipness to spare.

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Meranda Carter (via OC Weekly)

Slater's PB&J Burger

Pasadena is continuing its transformation from food desert to burger paradise, with the upcoming opening of Orange County burger spot Slater's 50/50. Add Haven Gastropub and King's Row -- plus the Umami Burger that's going into the old Naga Naga Ramen space on Colorado -- and Old Town Pasadena is looking like the destination of choice of burger-loving gourmands.

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G. Snyder

"The Classic" at Burger Lounge

The past few years have been good to Los Angeles burger lovers. Led by chains like Umami, Stout and The Counter, the city has experienced what can only be described as a full-fledged burger renaissance. A confluence of factors -- the increasing casualness of dining out, the rising popularity of comfort food, a budget-friendly price point -- have made the business of gourmet burgers a booming one. Who could complain, right?

Yet as much as we enjoy the patties made from Wagyu beef or grass-fed free-range cows, or the piles of arugula or crumbles of bleu cheese, the whipped aioli and the sauteed onions laced with truffle oil, it's difficult to shake the feeling that everything has become a bit convoluted in the current world of burger toppings. Remember the classic, unfettered, un-messed-with cheeseburger? Like the ones Wimpy would eat a dozen of on Popeye before uttering the catchphrase, "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today." Has that burger gone the way of the dinosaur? It appears not.

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