Crown Burgers: How a Greek Family From Crete Gave Salt Lake City Its Pastrami Burger

Ask anyone who grew up in Salt Lake City where to get a burger, and there’s a good chance the answer comes with pastrami on top. That answer is Crown Burgers, and it has been for nearly 50 years.

The story behind it starts a long way from the Wasatch Front, in the villages of Greece and Crete, and passes through a little burger stand near Disneyland before it ever reaches 200 South.

From Kambos and Crete to Salt Lake City

John Katzourakis came to America from the Greek village of Kambos in 1963. He spoke no English when he arrived and went to work in a steel mill before finding his way into restaurants. His wife, Rula, came from a family that emigrated from Crete in 1954.

Around 1970, John and Rula opened a burger stand near Disneyland with Rula’s family. They called it Mino’s Burgers, after King Minos of Crete. It never made them rich, but it did give them something more valuable: the pastrami burger. By most accounts, that California stand is where the idea of piling hot pastrami onto a cheeseburger first came together.

In 1977 the couple moved to Salt Lake City. A year later, John and Rula opened the first Crown Burgers with Rula’s brother, Nick Katsanevas, at 377 East 200 South downtown.

Busy from week one

That first Crown Burgers was a former hot dog stand with about 75 seats. It didn’t stay small for long. “We got so darn busy from the first week,” Rula told The Salt Lake Tribune. Within about 18 months the family built a 150-seat restaurant a few feet away, and that building is still serving burgers today.

From there, Crown Burgers grew the way family businesses do: one relative at a time. A second location opened near what was then the Delta Center in 1979. West Valley followed in 1981, Highland Drive in Millcreek in 1983, and Layton in 1987. South Salt Lake came in 2002, Sandy in 2004, and a takeout and delivery spot in Holladay in 2021. Each one was opened by members of the extended family.

Here’s the remarkable part. According to the family, Crown Burgers has never advertised. Every one of those locations was built on word of mouth.

The burger that made them famous

The Crown Burger itself is simple to describe and hard to forget: a quarter-pound cheeseburger topped with a pile of pastrami that has been simmered in a special sauce. “That’s what really made us famous,” George Katzourakis told KSL in 2025.

The rest of the menu is pure Salt Lake: fry sauce for the fries, plus Greek favorites like gyros, chicken souvlaki and rice pilaf served right alongside the burgers. The pastrami burger has drawn plenty of outside attention too, including a 2009 New York Times story and a 2010 visit from the Travel Channel’s Man v. Food.

Still a family affair

Nearly five decades in, Crown Burgers is still run by the families who built it. At the original 200 South location, George Katzourakis shares the work with his sister Eleni and brother-in-law Dean Markoudas. Today there are eight Crown Burgers across the Salt Lake Valley and Davis County, each with its own family ties to that first stand downtown.

How to do Crown Burgers right

• Order the Crown Burger. It’s the reason you came. Pastrami, cheese, special sauce, the works.
• Get fry sauce. This is Utah. It’s not optional.
• Try the Greek side of the menu. Rice pilaf, souvlaki and gyros are a nod to the family’s roots.
• Visit the original. The downtown location on 200 South is where it all started in 1978.

Plenty of restaurants serve a good burger. Very few become part of a city’s identity. Crown Burgers did it with one family, one recipe and no advertising at all, and Salt Lake is better for it.

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This spotlight draws on reporting from the Salt Lake Tribune, Deseret News, KSL and The Takeout. Top photo: Fuzzy Gerdes, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.