WHY Ordering the Dianne salad marks you as a true Pasadenan.

WHAT This institution does a brisk business in Cal-American cuisine. There’s a popular outdoor patio and a modern-coffee-shop interior, but wherever you choose to sit, the go-to dish is the Dianne salad, its ginormous take on Chinese chicken salad (for a more reasonable serving, get the ‘dinner’ size, not the full). It’s impossible to stop eating, as thousands of Pasadenans before you have discovered.

WHO Pasadena moms and their moms.