Bob S Big Boy Restaurants

The customers pour in daily at Noodle World in Alhambra, usually expecting nothing more than a heaping plate of Thai pad see-ew or a steaming bowl of Vietnamese pho. But on occasion, they react the way Martin Moreno did when entering the restaurant for the first time. "Oh my God, there's a Bob's Big Boy," the furniture seller said, staring at a statue of a boy in checkered overalls. "In an Asian restaurant?"

A fast-food cultural icon that was born as a lark and became an empire was created by the guy voted in high school "Least Likely to Succeed." But succeed he did. Nearly seven decades ago, a few years before the McDonald brothers, Dick and Mac, opened their hamburger joint in San Bernardino, Bob Wian created American culture on a bun when he introduced the fast-food phenomenon with the "double-deck" cheeseburger and added already popular drive-in carhop service to deliver it.

In Hollywood's "Casablanca," everybody went to Rick's Cafe Americain. In the real-life Tijuana, a city with a cinematic air of border intrigue, everybody goes to Bob's Big Boy. (El Big.) Cops, reporters, spies, lawyers, political bosses and former, current and future government officials--they all haunt the diner with the statue of the short, fat guy in front. The Big Boy franchise sits on Boulevard Agua Caliente, the city's main drag, across from the bullring and not far from the racetrack.