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 up some, the 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. T.