For as long as I can recall, the space at the corner of Union Street and Raymond, in the heart of Old Pasadena, was home to a wild-eyed burger place called Slater’s 50/50 , where, if you could imagine a burger combination, it was probably already on the menu. We love burgers. We love burgers with lots of cheese and stuff on them.
And we love them served with draft craft beer. I figured that combination would keep Slater’s afloat for many a decade. And then, one day, it was gone.
It was gone, with signs announcing it was going to be replaced by Pez Coastal Kitchen — named not for the kid’s candy called Pez, but for the Spanish word that’s an abbreviation for “Pescado.” It’s a fish house — eclectic with a Latino spin — that doesn’t even bother with a name on the monthly menu. All it’s got is a stylized cartoon fish.
Followed by a menu of seafood dishes found nowhere else in town. This is a fish house that exudes modernist creativity. Without a hamburger in sight.
And it brings up the befuddlement of the ever-shifting culinary trend of the moment, which like the proverbial moving finger, having writ moves on. It seemed to be just the other day that we had returned to our messy roots of smash burgers heavy with several types of melted cheese and thick-cut bacon. None of which is gone.
But Slater’s, home of the truly sloppy burger, is. And Pez brings us back to the modernist elegance of steelhead trout rillettes, and seared bluefin tuna. It can dizzy the .
