Restaurant of the Week: Everest Drive-In

This week's restaurant: Everest Drive-In, 430 N. Central Ave. (at Arrow Route), Upland.

Emulating its namesake, Everest rises majestically along a quiet stretch of Central near Montclair, next door to a vacant lot.

It's another of those burger palaces that has a zillion items on the menu, sort of the spiritual opposite of In-N-Out: not only a dozen styles of hamburger but pastrami and other kinds of sandwiches, basic Mexican items, salads, breakfasts, even an "old fashioned Sloppy Joe" ($2.99).

I had a burger combo there a while back with fries and a soda ($5.49). The char-broiled patty is topped with Thousand Island, lettuce, tomato and red onion. Good stuff. The fries aren't bad. One nice touch: Ketchup is on the tables in glass bottles. The restaurant interior, however, is bland, beige and uninspiring.

Not having had a chance to write about Everest at the time, I returned recently for two more meals. I got the Mediterranean chicken sandwich, again as a combo ($8.58); it comes on a wheat bun, with red and green peppers and feta cheese. A for effort, although the sandwich was better conceptually than as a physical object. Oh well. A week later, an a la carte BLT ($4.19) hit the spot for dinner.

There are other Everest locations in Altadena and La Crescenta. But if you're going to explore Everest, why travel farther than Upland?