Handy Market

Look to your right for Handy Market — and if it's a weekend morning, you'll smell it before you read the sign. Out front, a team fires up a row of big grills in the parking lot, and the scent of tri-tip, chicken, and sausages drifts halfway down the block. That barbecue has become a genuine Burbank ritual, drawing lines of neighbors every weekend for about three decades now.

But the store behind the smoke is the real story: an independent, family-run grocery that has outlasted the supermarket chains all around it. Harry Arzoian opened Handy Market on this spot in 1969, and the name came straight from the neighbors, who kept remarking how “handy” it was to have a shop this good right next door. His son Alan took over, and a third generation now works the aisles — the same family, the same corner, for over half a century.

Inside, it's the kind of grocery that barely exists anymore: an old-fashioned neighborhood market with a full butcher counter and a genuinely serious wine and craft-beer selection tucked in beside the everyday goods. It's the pre-chain American main street, still running exactly as intended — a place where the butcher might know your name.

Think about what it takes to survive here. A block from vintage boutiques and prop shops that trade on Hollywood glamour, Handy Market simply feeds people, well and reliably, generation after generation. That's its own kind of endurance, and it's why locals are so fiercely loyal to it. The weekend grills out front aren't a marketing gimmick; they're a neighborhood gathering point that happens to smell incredible. When you're ready, we'll continue toward a little roadside monument to the golden age of the American car.