You can’t sink your teeth into it, the cheese isn’t melted, and the hamburger patty isn’t juicy. But a crocheted Crown Burger and fries on display at the Utah restaurant chain’s Millcreek location is still remarkably lifelike, complete with a container of crocheted fry sauce and a slice of crocheted pastrami.
Made by Elaina Maragakis Simos, who lives in Holladay, the crocheted meal is getting attention from Crown Burger customers and from commenters online. One Redditor suggested that she enter it into the Utah State Fair.
Maragakis Simos, who refers to herself as a crochet hobbyist, said her burger “has taken on a life of its own” since Mike Katsanevas, the owner of the Crown Burger at 3190 S. Highland Drive, decided to put it on the front counter.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Elaina Maragakis Simos crocheted a lifesize Crown Burger and fries and gifted it to Mike Katsanevas, the owner of the Highland Drive location of Crown Burger, on Monday, May 19, 2025.
“We’ve gotten a good laugh out of it in our family,” she said.
By day, Maragakis Simos is a lawyer at a prominent Utah law firm. At home, when she’s watching a movie or TV, her hands are usually busy crocheting. “It’s really just something that I do to relax and decompress,” she said.
While she has crocheted some blankets, Maragakis Simos usually does amigurumi, which is the Japanese art of crocheting or knitting cute three-dimensional toys made out of yarn and stuffing. She has made some food items, like cupcakes, she said, but more often she’ll crochet animals.
She said that when she was a kid, her grandmother taught her the basic crochet stitches, but she taught herself how to do amigurumi.
Instead of selling what she makes, Maragakis Simos typically crochets amigurumi objects to give to her family. She made a brain and gave it to her brother, who’s a neurologist, and she crocheted viruses for her sister-in-law, who’s a doctor specializing in infectious diseases.
Maragakis Simos said one the weirdest things she’s crocheted is the couch she made for her mini goldendoodle, Meli (which means “honey” in Greek). “She loves it. She lays on it all the time,” Maragakis Simos said.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Elaina Maragakis Simos crocheted a lifesize Crown Burger and fries and gifted it to Mike Katsanevas, the owner of the Highland Drive location of Crown Burger, on Monday, May 19, 2025.
She said her family has been going out to eat at Crown Burger “forever,” and her twin 17-year-old boys have been working at the Millcreek location for a couple of years. Maragakis Simos said Katsanevas, her sons’ boss, is “the most kind, generous, happy person, and he always does so much for other people.”
One night, Maragakis Simos and her family were at that Crown Burger, and she noticed the other “burgers” that Katsanevas has on display in the restaurant, like a ceramic burger and one made out of Lego bricks.
“I looked at it, and I said to my husband, ‘You know, I think I’m going to crochet a hamburger for Mike, just for fun,’” she said.
Her husband said her burger wouldn’t be a Crown Burger without pastrami on it, but she didn’t have a pattern for a slice of pastrami, so she modified a pattern for a piece of bacon. The rest of the components for the burger — including a slice of bright-red tomato with seeds — she made by adapting patterns she found online.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) French fries and fry sauce gifted it to Mike Katsanevas, the owner of the Highland Drive location of Crown Burger, on Monday, May 19, 2025.
Maragakis Simos’ kids said she had to make fries to go with the burger, so she made a box of fries where each fry is its own crocheted piece. Another family member said she had to put Crown Burger’s logo on the box of fries. “At this point, I was like, ‘This is spiraling out of control,’” she said.
But she referenced photos and “stumbled my way” through crocheting the logo, she said.
The finished product, which took a couple of months to crochet, she said, is “close” to life-size.
Katsanevas, whose father was good friends with Maragakis Simos’ father, said “receiving a gift from her was so kind and made me so happy. ... For someone to go through that kind of time and give me that for no reason was just very sentimental. It meant a lot.”
He said that customers “freak out” over the crocheted set. “They pick it up and they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, you can actually take it apart,’” Katsanevas said.
He added that once his regulars all see the set, he might put a plastic cover over it to protect it from the smoke and grease in the restaurant.
But for the time being, Maragakis Simos’ Crown Burger and fries will stay on the counter at the restaurant for customers to handle and enjoy.
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