Crown Burgers (City Center)
118 North 300 WestI hate flying. I hate not being in control.
My flight from Grand Rapids to Salt Lake, with a connection in Dallas, was actually pretty uneventful and on time.
I got to Salt Lake right on time around 7:30. J was still awake and not doing anything so she said she’d come pick me up instead of me having to pay for an Uber.
It took me about a half hour to get off the plane and make my way from the Terminal B to the passenger pick up lane. I walked outside just as J was pulling up to the curb.
She had put in an address for an In-N-Out Burger on the way back to the hotel. I told her that was a good idea but let’s do In-N-Out tomorrow. I had an idea for dinner that night. We put in the address for a Salt Lake City fast food chain instead.
Crown Burgers is a small chain of eight restaurants in and around Salt Lake. We chose the one in the City Centre on the corner of North 300 W (John Stockton Drive) and North Temple. The chain has been around since the late 70’s after being started by two Greek immigrant brothers. This location, on a busy corner in the downtown area, has it’s own parking and a pretty unique design for a fast food restaurant.
The entrance to the building is on the N 300 W side of the building while the parking lot is on North Temple. The first thing you notice is the doors. These are big, thick, wooden doors, not the usual glass doors in to a vestibule you’ll see at the majority of fast food joints.
The dining room is quite big and a throwback to the late 1970’s. The brown tile floor and green wallpaper are a little dated. It’s also kind of odd seeing chandeliers being used to light the space. The tables are pretty standard fast food tables but the chairs are all leather backed and each end of each table, there is a high backed red leather chair signifying the “head” of the table.
Outside of this elevated dining room there is a lower level dining room that makes kind of a U-Shape around the outside of the building. This area has the same brown tile but instead of tables, both sides of the aisle are lined with boots.
,The order counter is right inside the door and the menu is placed above it. Crown Burgers brags about the size of it’s menu having over 100 items on it. I knew when I walked in what I wanted but I hung back so J could figure out what she wanted. The cashier takes the order and hands you a slip with a number. The orders are cooked fresh on the grill right behind the order counter then numbers are called out when it’s all ready to go.
We put in an order for a Crown Buger, a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger, a grilled cheese, two orders of fries and two drinks. The cost came out to about $37.
The one thing we had to do while waiting was get J some fry sauce. She lived in Idaho for a couple of years and Fry Sauce is by far the thing she misses most about living there. The dipping sauce is a combination of mayo, ketchup, and spices. It’s funny because she doesn’t really dip fries in ketchup and doesn’t like mayo but it’s something about that combination that she loves. We had to make sure to get enough zto dip everyone of her fries in.
It took a little less than 10 minutes for our order number to be called. The food was packed up neatly in a box that looked more like a donut box. We grabbed it and headed back to the hotel to eat.
I chose Crown Burgers for a couple of reason. The big one being it’s a chain local to Salt Lake City. It was also fast food since I didn’t want to keep J out any longer. We were going to have an early morning and no one had really adjusted to the time change. But there was a burger I definitely wanted to try.
The Crown Burger is Crown Burgers signature sandwich. The cheeseburger is topped with pastrami, 1000 Island dressing, lettuce, tomato, onion, and American cheese. It’s funny to me that I just blogged about 1000 Island on a burger in my last post about Bell’s Tap and Table and here we are again. It makes a little more sense on this burger with the pastrami but it’s still weird to me. I didn’t ask to leave it off so I was happy to find there wasn’t a lot of it. The sandwich was a typical, but tasty fast food burger with the added pepperiness of the pastrami. There wasn’t a lot of pastrami on it but enough to give the sandwich an extra bite and make it a little unique.
J’s burger choice was the Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger. This sandwich is a burger patty topped with American cheese, bacon, lettuce, and tomato. A simple but delicious sandwich. It’s a pretty typical fast food burger.
We got two orders of fries. One each for me and J. The fries are simple frozen fast food fries. They’re conduits for the fry sauce I mentioned earlier. They were nothing special but a good round out to the meal.
After we ordered, J noticed they had Baklava. I told her to just go back up and order a slice. It’s a pretty small slice of the layered Greek dessert. I’m not a fan so I didn’t even try it. J ate it after I left so I don’t know what she thought of it.
Crown Burgers is a must stop in Salt Lake City. It’s just one of those local things that you have to do when you’re in town. Sure, it’s fast food but if you’re going to do fast food, why go someplace you can get at home. The food was better than hitting up one of the national drive thrus and it’s an experience you only get in SLC.
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