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The Dianne salad with a side of zucchini bread from Green Street Restaurant in Pasadena.

12 of the most defining dishes in Pasadena, including this famous salad

By Jenn HarrisColumnist

Dec. 30, 2024 Updated 12:56 PM PT

Not only is Pasadena filled with worthwhile restaurants, it’s also home to signature dishes such as the Dianne salad.
For locals or tourists visiting the City of Roses, here are 12 sought-after plates that define Pasadena’s dining scene.

When Dianne Willis brought a chicken salad to a dinner party, she had no idea it would become the most famous bowl of lettuce in Pasadena.

It was 1979, and Willis made a green salad with boiled chicken for friends Michael and Joanne Hawkins. It had crispy fried noodles and toasted almonds on top, and a dressing that was equal parts sweet and tangy. The salad was the undisputed hit of the party.

When Hawkins and partner Bob Harrison decided to open Green Street restaurant a month later in Pasadena, Willis’ salad was still on their minds.

They asked Willis if they could put the salad on the menu and name it after her.

The restaurant served the Dianne salad on its second day in business (Harrison says they didn’t have all the ingredients prepared the day they opened), and its popularity was immediate.

Neither Willis, Harrison or the Hawkinses could predict that the Dianne salad would become Green Street’s signature dish, accounting for a third of the restaurant’s sales.

“Nobody knew this was going to be the one,” says Harrison, whose family still runs the restaurant.

For the Dianne salad, the restaurants shreds the iceberg lettuce, fries the noodles, roasts the almonds and sesame seeds and boils the chicken. And they make a few batches of the dressing every day. It’s the specific combination of corn oil, rice vinegar, sugar, black pepper and dry mustard that gives the dressing that distinct tang and mild sweetness. It’s served with a wedge of orange you squeeze over the top for a bright pop of citrus.

Harrison says the restaurant serves around 500 to 600 Dianne salads per week and prepares another 100 or so for takeout. People have it catered for office parties, memorials and all sorts of celebrations. There’s a small refrigerated area off to the side of the entrance where you can buy bottles of the dressing, and if you ever move out of state, you can order a Dianne salad kit to be shipped to your home. There are T-shirts for sale that say “Raised on Dianne salad.”

Growing up in Pasadena, I spent many lunches, dinners and weekend brunches at the restaurant. I was a kid raised on the Dianne salad, a dish that’s become synonymous with an unfussy, leisurely cafe lunch in Pasadena.

Researching the origins of the Dianne salad for this column got me thinking about the many other dishes I associate with the city and the places I recommend most to visitors. Here’s a list of my favorites in the area. Most are old standbys, with a few newcomers I can’t imagine being without.

Showing Places

Cachapas from Amara Cafe

Pasadena Venezuelan $

Amara Cafe is located just south of the parade route in Old Pasadena on Raymond Avenue. Owner Amara Barroeta serves a variety of drinks and dishes from Venezuela. It feels especially cozy during the holidays, with steaming cups of Venezuelan hot chocolate on most tables, sugar-dusted churros and irresistible corn pancakes called cachapas. Barroeta spent many mornings eating cachapas from the vendors that line the highways near her hometown of Los Teques, the capital city of Miranda in Venezuela. She grills her corn before adding it to her batter to absorb some of the moisture and to add a roasted flavor. The pancakes are browned on both sides with crisp, misshapen edges that almost make them look like fritters. You can order your cachapa filled with queso fresco or queso de mano. The latter is how Barroeta eats her cachapas back home, with a fat slice of the cheese stuffed into the middle.

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Lengua taco at Arturo’s Taco Truck

Pasadena Mexican $

Everyone should have a favorite neighborhood taco truck. For years, my go-to has been Arturo’s, a truck that parks on Fair Oaks Avenue in a parking lot about a mile south of Colorado Boulevard. Here, the allure of the lengua is so great, the supple meatiness of the hunks of stewed tongue so exact, that I crave it, and it alone, every time I visit. But they serve all the standard taco truck meats in tacos, burritos, mulita and quesadillas, and on top of sopes, nachos and fries. Order your favorites and don’t forget to hit up the salsa bar.

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The ube custard-filled turon from Chaaste Family Market in Pasadena.

Ube turon from Chaaste Family Market

Pasadena Filipino $

Chaaste is a Filipino market and cafe in Northeast Pasadena where you’ll find refrigerators full of frozen desserts and drinks and a hot bar with everything from lumpia to pancit and curry. The shop is run by Christian Esteban and his family, who opened Chaaste in 1987. Over the years, I’ve picked up food for family gatherings and stopped in for a halo halo during the summer. The one item I never leave without is the turon, made using Esteban’s mother’s recipe. She sprinkles raw banana with sugar, then wraps it in pastry sheets sourced from the Philippines. The fruit turns into a soft, custard-like filling in the fryer. The sugar seeps out and gives the rolls a glossy, deep brown coating.

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Cobbler from the Gourmet Cobbler Factory

Pasadena Southern Desserts $

Clifton Powell and his wife Gloria started making his family’s cobbler recipe out of a small storefront just north of Colorado Boulevard in 2002. The space was previously home to another cobbler business that had been making cobblers since 1978. The Powells make the classic peach, apple, blackberry, blueberry, cherry, lemon meringue and mixed berry. The fruit is always fresh and the tops blanketed in two layers of buttery crust. Powell introduced a barbecue menu about 10 years ago, with ribs, chicken and brisket. They tend to run out of the peach cobbler first, so plan accordingly.

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Dianne salad from Green Street restaurant

Pasadena American $

It’s the salad on everyone’s table, garnished with a single slice of orange and a plate of zucchini bread. If there were a single dish associated with the city itself, it might be this, introduced to Pasadena diners in 1979. The iceberg lettuce is shredded and tossed with diced boiled chicken, crunchy slivered almonds, fried noodles and lots of toasted sesame seeds. The dressing gets its signature tang from a mix of rice vinegar and dry mustard. I always ask for extra. If you only have the time for a single meal in town (and you appreciate a good salad), it should be this one.

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The hot chicken sandwich from Howlin' Ray's is a must-try sandwich if you're in the Pasadena area.

Hot chicken from Howlin' Ray's

Pasadena Hot chicken $$

You can track the origin of the hot chicken craze in Los Angeles to Howlin’ Ray’s. Johnny Ray and Amanda Zone opened their food-truck-turned-restaurant in the Far East Plaza in Chinatown in 2015. I’ve spent many hours in line at that restaurant, eager for the soul-enriching burn of Ray’s spicy fried chicken. Mild tickles, medium tingles, hot burns and Howlin’ hot is for people who don’t need to feel the lower half of their face for the rest of the day. The couple opened a Howlin Ray’s in 2022 on Arroyo Parkway, just north of where the 110 Freeway ends. If you want to understand why there’s a restaurant pushing hot chicken in a shopping center near you, this is the place to start.

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Olive oil cake and caramels at Little Flower

Pasadena Bakery $

Christine Moore started Little Flower Candy Co. as a confection operation out of her home in Highland Park nearly three decades ago. Her salted caramels and marshmallows are sold in shops all over the country. She opened Little Flower candy kitchen and cafe in 2007 on the western edge of the city. There, you’ll find the confections Moore is known for in a marketplace stocked with artisanal condiments, sauces, pasta, baking gadgets and gifts for every gourmand. There’s a grab-and-go section with salads and sandwiches and a bakery case teeming with cookies, cakes and whatever pastries were baked that morning. The olive oil cake is a longtime favorite, with a rich buttercream frosting and a touch of citrus.

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The macadamia nut pancakes with a side of banana from Marston's Restaurant in Pasadena.

Pancakes from Marston's Restaurant

Pasadena American $$

Whenever I had a free first period in high school, I used to stop by Marston’s with a friend for pancakes and French toast before heading to Mayfield Senior School. The small cafe, located in an old Craftsman cottage, has been around since 1987. The macadamia nut pancakes are a longtime favorite, with fluffy flapjacks covered in chopped nuts and maple syrup. I like to add a side of bananas over the top. Depending on my mood, I’ll switch things up with an order of the French toast. The slabs of bread are coated in crushed corn flake cereal for a nice crunch. And during lunchtime, there’s the California orange salad, a close second to the Dianne salad for the most loved greens in Pasadena. The leaves of romaine and iceberg are topped with chicken, mandarin oranges, avocado, blue cheese, raisins, candied pecans and green onion. It’s tossed in the restaurant’s signature San Pasqual vinaigrette, a piquant dressing made with cider vinegar and Worcestershire sauce that you can also buy by the bottle.

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Inside neighborhood restaurant Mi Piace in Pasadena

Focaccia and pasta from Mi Piace

Pasadena Italian $$

Armen Shirvanian and Takis Markoutsis opened Mi Piace Italian restaurant in 1989. The bustling retail center known as Old Pasadena blossomed around the restaurant along Colorado Boulevard in the ’90s and 2000s. This is where I celebrated my 16th birthday and worked as a hostess when I was 19. Lunch often feels like a much needed respite and dinner is always a party. The fresh-baked focaccia is nonnegotiable, crisp around the edges, soft in the center and sheathed in a mix of cheese, garlic and rosemary. I could make a meal of this bread and a martini. The two other dishes that sustained my family throughout the years include the fried calamari with a jalapeno lime dipping sauce I can taste as I type this, and perfect bowls of the penne all’ arrabbiata.

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Khachapuri from Old Sasoon Bakery

Pasadena Bakery Armenian $

Old Sasoon is the bakery that introduced me to khachapuri, maneish slathered with za’atar and lahmajoune when I was growing up nearby. Haroutiou Geragosian started his bakery in 1948 in Aleppo, Syria. When the family moved to Pasadena in the mid ‘80s, his son Joseph continued the family business. The patio is usually packed with people ripping off corners of their khachapuri and dunking them into the runny egg in the center. The bread is served with a fork and knife, but I always use my hands. The same goes for the maneish. I like the flatbreads covered in both cheese curds and the grainy spice blend, the heady mixture of thyme, sesame and sumac covering every inch of the surface.

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Tarte tatin from Perle

Pasadena French $$

I consider the tarte tatin at Dean Yasharian’s French bistro a necessary indulgence. Even after a dinner table full of dover sole meunière swimming in brown butter, p?té de Champagne with a nose-tingling mustard and a pot full of duck cassoulet, I crave the tarte tatin. Yasharian arranges quartered apples over a layer of caramel in a pan. The apples soften in the oven while their juices seep into the caramel to create a sauce. He folds his all-butter puffy pastry around the apples and bakes the tartes until the caramel bubbles up around the edges. The pastry cracks and the apples are sweet and tender. Maybe order one for everyone at the table.

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The Big Ben from Pie 'n Burger in Pasadena.

Pie and a burger from Pie 'n Burger

Pasadena American Burgers $

Pie ‘n Burger is like a time capsule restaurant from the ’60s, where the counter seating and cash register remain. As the name suggests, a complete meal should include both a burger and a slice of pie. The burgers are wrapped in crisp white paper, with buns that are toasted, patties crusty around the edges, melted American cheese, enough Thousand Island dressing to make it messy and a thick bundle of iceberg lettuce. I add both grilled and raw onion, but you do you. Choose your own adventure for the pie, but a slice of Dutch apple with a scoop of French vanilla ice cream is a fine way to end any meal.

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