According to one account, the hamburger was first sold at the Erie County Fair in Hamburg, New York, in 1885, by brothers Frank and Charles Menches. The two Ohio brothers had arrived on the grounds of the fair too late to get a supply of chopped pork for their sandwich concession. The butcher sold them beef instead, and after the Buffalo, New York, suburb where they were doing business.
Hamburg’s claim to be the site of the first hamburger is disputed by the town of Seymour, Wisconsin, where a man named Charles Nagreen is claimed to have served hamburger sandwiches in 1885.
Another story about the origins of the ubiquitous burger states that in the late 1800’s Fletcher Davis, a potter in Athens, Texas, wasn’t selling enough pottery. Therefore he opened a lunch counter. His specialty? A ground-beef patty served between slices of home-made bread. In 1904 Davis went to the World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri, with his recipe, which was, of course, a big hit. At the Fair the ground beef sandwich was deemed the hamburger, because in Hamburg, Germany, ground beef patties were popular, though the patties there are more like meat loaf and lack a bun. (It is believed that 19th-century German sailors learned about eating raw shredded beef, “Steak Tartare,” in the Baltic Provinces. A German cook eventually had the idea of cooking the Tartare mixture.)
Fletcher Davis is also credited with serving fried potato strips at the World’s Fair. A friend in Paris, Texas, had given him the idea, but a reporter thought that Davis said “Paris, France,” and those potatoes are forevermore “French Fries.”
Another contender in the “hamburger invention” contest is Louie’s Lunch, a Yale off-campus eatery. This New Haven, Connecticut, site is said to have first offered the burger in 1895.
The commercial bun on which hamburgers are now served was created by diner operator Walter Anderson of Wichita, Kansas, who also invented the modern grill (both events around 1916) and then established the chain of White Castle hamburger restaurants.
Lionel Clark Sternberger, later proprietor of the Rite Spot steakhouse in Los Angeles, experimentally tossed a slice of cheese on a hamburger he was cooking at his father’s short-order shop in Pasadena, California, in 1924, thus originating the cheeseburger.
The word “cheeseburger” was patented by Louis Ballast in 1944. Ballast grilled a slice of cheese onto burgers at his Denver, Colorado, drive-in.
Well, you know the rest—McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, White Castle, etc.—burgers everywhere. Some good, some so-so. But certainly an all-American favorite. A “classic.”
