The pastrami burger is a Utah favorite, as synonymous with the Beehive State as fry sauce and green Jell-O.
The three most well-known Greek-owned burger restaurants in Utah — Crown Burgers, Astro Burgers and Apollo Burger — all serve their own version of the pastrami burger. All of them feature a charbroiled beef patty topped with a heap of juicy pastrami, served on a bun with signature sauce, melty cheese, tomato and lettuce.
Utahns sing its praises, but where did this meat-on-meat behemoth of a burger come from?
Before Crown Burgers and Astro Burgers got their start in Utah, their founders lived in California, working in the restaurant industry.
[Read more: You’ve heard the myths about how Utah’s 3 well-known Greek burger restaurants started. Here’s the true story.]
As they started becoming familiar with the Los Angeles-area food scene, they found the pastrami burger being served at some restaurants and burger joints.
George Lyhnakis said his father, Astro Burgers co-founder John Lyhnakis, worked at K&J Restaurant and Tiptoe In when he lived in California. Both establishments served pastrami burgers.
Before Jim Katsanevas opened a Crown Burgers location in Millcreek in 1983, he founded Mino’s Burgers in California with his sister Rula Katzourakis and her husband, John Katzourakis. They served a bacon cheeseburger, mushroom burger, chili burger and more at Mino’s, but people would sometimes come in and ask Jim — whom they would call Minos — to put some pastrami on their burger, said Jim’s son, Mike Katsanevas.
People requested pastrami so often, Mike Katsanevas said, that the founders of Mino’s Burgers decided to make it the main burger. Since restaurants would usually give their pastrami burgers unique names, Jim Katsanevas and John Katzourakis decided to call theirs the Zorba Burger, after the outgoing character Anthony Quinn played in the 1964 film “Zorba the Greek.”
Mike Katsanevas said it’s difficult to pinpoint who came up with the pastrami burger first. “It was an idea all the Greeks had,” he said.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) A signature pastrami-topped burger that is the namesake for the greek fast-food restaurant sits in a tray before being served at Crown Burger in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025.
‘Everybody just went crazy over it’
Nick Katsanevas and Rula and John Katzourakis opened the first Crown Burgers location in 1978 in downtown Salt Lake City, residents were ready for their pastrami burger. “We put it as the Crown Burger special on the top of our menu, and everybody just went crazy over it,” Rula Katzourakis said.
The sudden popularity of the burger was unlike what they’d seen in California, even at Mino’s Burgers. “When we came [to Utah],” Rula Katzourakis said, “it was just the best sandwich everybody ever had.”
Back then, by the way, a Crown Burger (Crown’s name for its pastrami burger) cost only $1.95. Today, the same burger costs $8.99.
George Lyhnakis and Mike Katsanevas both credit Omega Burger, founded by John Limberakis in 1977, with being the first Greek-owned burger restaurant to bring the pastrami burger from California to Utah. Omega Burger closed its three locations in 1998.
Why did the pastrami burger take off like it did in Utah? “I just think there wasn’t a lot of variety,” Lyhnakis said. “There wasn’t a lot of local representation. Back then, there was a Wendy’s, and there was McDonald’s and probably Burger King, but Utah … hadn’t tasted anything new.”
The success of businesses like Crown Burgers and Astro Burgers inspired the Ziouras family to start Apollo Burger, and they were quick to cook up their own pastrami burger.
Michael Ziouras, the president of Apollo Burger, said all of the Greek burger places are “extremely similar, but we all also put our own influence on it. I think we were definitely inspired by the Crown menu.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The “Utah Burger” at the Main Street location of Apollo Burger, in Salt Lake City, on Monday, Feb. 10, 2025.
Apollo Burger took the classic pastrami burger even further with the creation of the Utah Burger. Around 2017, Apollo Burger was catering some of the tailgate parties at the University of Utah football games. At those events, Michael Ziouras said they had a number of tailgaters ask Apollo Burger if they could create a personalized sandwich for them, “and they asked for as much protein as we could fit.”
So they started with their quarter-pound cheeseburger, then added a quarter pound of pastrami, 3 ounces of bacon and 3 ounces of gyro meat.
“It’s a heart attack burger waiting to happen,” Ziouras said. The burger was so well-received that it became a permanent fixture on the Apollo Burger menu.
However, the Apollo Burger, Apollo’s own pastrami burger, is a “far and away favorite,” he said.