Burger Triumphant

This might sound excessive, but the DB is still a magnificent creation. The flavor combination of the sirloin and short ribs is divine–even without the fresh black truffle. Its inventor, the French chef Daniel Boulud, describes the DB, which weighs nine ounces and is four inches tall, as a “burger for grown-ups.” Boulud had the idea for “a fancy French-American burger” in late 2000, and to this day, out of 100 lunchtime customers at DB Bistro Moderne, roughly 80 will order the $32 indulgence. (When in season, a roughly $150 version is available, with a double portion of black truffle shavings.)

“For me it was not about creating decadence,” insists the celebrity chef. “It was more about creating a real complex and interesting burger.”

But is it even a burger? Not so, says Marc Sherry, proprietor of the Old Homestead Steakhouse in lower Manhattan’s meat-packing district. “It’s a good product–a very damn good product–but it’s not what America is looking for in a burger.” Two years after Boulud’s creation debuted, the Old Homestead, which was the first American restaurant to feature Japanese Kobe beef on its menu, announced it would be selling its own hamburger for the first time in its 140-year history: the $41 Kobe burger.

“All right, here’s what we’re going to do,” Sherry recalls saying at a staff meeting. “We’re going to take the highest, greatest stuff that you can find .  .  . grind it up, make it into a 20-ounce patty, and send it on out there.”

Like the DB, the Kobe burger was an enormous hit; last year it generated over $1.7 million in sales at the New York location alone. And with all the publicity surrounding the two high-priced offerings–Boulud and Sherry both made the rounds on television–the media were now dubbing the affair “The Burger Wars.” Other restaurants then joined the fray, the most recent being the Wall Street Burger Shoppe, which features a $175 hamburger complete with foie gras, black truffle shavings, and gold leaf flakes. (Boulud calls this a publicity stunt and “a really stupid idea.” Sherry replies that, in contrast, his Kobe burger “has no gimmicks to it.”)

How did a sandwich once reviled as something unsanitary and purchased outside factories and at carnivals come so far? The answer can be found in this little book, The Hamburger: A History. “What do Americans think of when they think of the hamburger?” asks the author, Josh Ozersky. “Is it a sizzling disc of goodness, served in a roadside restaurant dense with local lore, or the grim end product of a secret, sinister empire of tormented animals and unspeakable slaughtering practices? Is it cooking or commodity? An icon of freedom or the quintessence of conformity?”

As you might guess, it depends on who you ask.

Luckily, The Hamburger does not devolve into a metaphysical debate. And while it is more than a mere chronology of events, the history of the sandwich from its humble origins to its current exalted state is what makes this book vastly entertaining. Ozersky, the online food editor of New York, traces the hamburger as far back as 1763 in a recipe for what he calls a “proto-hamburger ancestor” in Hannah Glasse’s Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy:

It sounds feasible until you have to ask the butcher for “the largest Gut you can find.”

But what of the genuine hamburger sandwich? There is no doubt it is an American invention from the late 19th century, although there are competing claims from Wisconsin, New York, Connecticut, and Oklahoma, as well as the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. To this day the debate remains unresolved, but one thing was certain: The hamburger’s image would change from a poor person’s food to everyone’s favorite meal thanks largely to Walter Anderson, a former fry cook, and his real estate agent, Edgar Waldo “Billy” Ingram.

In 1916 Anderson opened a hamburger stand in Wichita. He stressed not only serving a savory burger with sautéed onions, ketchup, and mustard (in a custom-made white bun) but also the cleanliness of the establishment, as represented by its spotless floors and white walls. Indeed, it was called White Castle, and while Anderson devoted his time to food innovations, his partner focused on the business.

Ingram “created the template for all fast-food restaurants in the world,” writes Ozersky. In a company newsletter from 1926, Ingram stated, “The day of the dirty, greasy hamburger is past. No more shall we be privileged to taste the hamburger at the circuses and carnivals only, for a new system has arisen, the ‘White Castle System.’ ”

As a 1932 brochure puts it:

As the author notes, “Ingram understood before anyone else that he was building, not just a hamburger chain, but an identity, what today would be called a brand.”

Over time, other burger businesses would arise. In 1937, a Glendale, California, restaurateur named Bob Wian created the first double-decker hamburger, which proved a tremendous success. He called it the Big Boy (the nickname of a portly six-year-old who worked for him for free food) and the restaurant itself would eventually adopt the moniker. But in order for Big Boys to proliferate around the country, Wian had to embrace the franchising system. (White Castle’s Ingram did not, as Ozersky explains, because “he felt [it] would cheapen the White Castle brand; only the ‘operators’ under his iron control could be counted upon to uphold the standards of the System.”)

But neither Ingram nor Wian would be as successful as Ray Kroc. In 1954, the paper cup and blender salesman visited a San Bernardino hamburger joint and was so impressed by the operation and the loyalty of its customers that he offered to go into partnership with (and later buy out) the owners, brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald.

The founders had already successfully converted their drive-in that once served barbecue and employed carhops into, according to Ozersky, “a profit machine that you would turn on in the morning and turn off at night,” thanks to the McDonalds’ Speedee Service System. The menu was shortened and the food preparation resembled an assembly line (involving six-foot griddles, precision condiment pumps, and a heat bar to keep the sandwiches warm). In addition, the owners’ target customers were no longer teenagers but the family–particularly busy postwar mothers. By 1961, annual sales totaled $61 million; today, that number soars to $29 billion.

Without question, the success of McDonald’s can be attributed to Kroc’s willingness to franchise the restaurants. Adds Ozersky: “It was in the concept of cooperative partnership between the company and its franchisees that tapped into the boundless economic energies of the postwar years and helped McDonald’s to take its place at the center of American commercial culture.”

On the other hand, the McDonald’s manual left little room for individualism–or what Kroc considered treason. The ruthless Kroc was known for firing employees who chewed gum, wore sideburns, sported mustaches, or drank Manhattans. But as Ozersky points out, we are indebted to the franchisees who did break from the system with an occasional innovation, such as Herb Paterson of Santa Barbara (the Egg McMuffin), Jim Delligatti of Pittsburgh (the Big Mac), and Lou Groen of Cincinnati (the Filet-O-Fish).

Of course, another strong selling point was price. In the 1950s and early ’60s hamburgers were only 15 cents, French fried potatoes were 10 cents, and milk shakes were 20 cents. And yet an upstart rival would gain critical success by selling a hamburger for 29 cents. It was called the Whopper, created by James McLamore, cofounder of Insta-Burger King (later Burger King) in 1957, and it was larger than anything on McDonald’s menu–a quarter-pound of flame-broiled beef. In 1969 Dave Thomas started his own hamburger restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, called Wendy’s (after his daughter) and he had the audacity to sell hamburgers for a staggering 55 cents. McDonald’s finally responded with its Quarter Pounder in 1972 for 53 cents.

In each instance, the larger and more expensive sandwiches proved ever more popular. The escalation both in price and size revealed America’s unconditional love for the hamburger and the near-limitless bounds for burger entrepreneurs–right up to the DB and Kobe burgers. But why?

“Why not?” replies the Old Homestead’s Marc Sherry. “The stock market is no good. Gas prices are high. If you can’t sit down and have a great burger, where are we at?” The way he sees it, Americans cannot get enough of the hamburger precisely because it is everywhere. He compares it to the doughnut: “Someone says to you, ‘I’ve got a doughnut better than any other doughnut you’ve ever had,’ well then it becomes priceless. A regular doughnut is $2, and then you pay $12 for it because it’s the quest to get the best because it’s something you’ve been eating all your life.”

“Burgers appeal to every segment, across any age group or demographic that I know, if you’re doing it by race, if you’re doing it by economics,” says Tom Racosky, founder of the fledgling Big Buns Gourmet Grill in Arlington, Virginia. “Not to be morbid, but it’s the number one meal [of death row inmates] eaten as their last meal before execution, a hamburger and fries.” On the lighter side, he asks, “What’s classic in your life? What never goes out of style? Going to the movies, Sunday football, Monday night football, the hot dog, afternoon at the ball park, Thanksgiving dinner, the hamburger. As much as we want change in this world, we want comfort also. We want consistency.”

For Josh Ozersky, “Studying [the hamburger] story is one way of studying the country that invented it, and then reinvented it again and again. The symbol is just the sizzle; the meat of the hamburger’s meaning lies in how it changed the world, and why.” And within the confines of this small book, he manages to explain just that, while sprinkling his chapters with fascinating tidbits. Did you know, for instance, that the first Ronald McDonald clown was played by Willard Scott?

Of course, the hamburger’s image hasn’t always shined. Throughout its history, it came to represent (via McDonald’s) American imperialism abroad. There were health concerns for the general population (and specifically obese children) and raging debates over animal cruelty and environmental degradation. But still the hamburger finds a way to prevail–much like American culture: It may be loathed but it is seemingly unstoppable. It knows no boundaries.

“The funny thing now,” Daniel Boulud tells me, “is that in France, chefs are making burgers all over the place. So maybe I should open a little burger place in Lyon, my home town? That will be the biggest satisfaction I will get–if I can make a burger place in Lyon and the Lyonnais come and eat it. I’ll be the king.”

Victorino Matus is assistant managing editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.