"Hey Hamburger, Happy Birthday!"

Hey Hamburger, Happy Birthday! @ A Hamburger Today

E.M.

Hi,

In the late 1980's, I was in Hamburg, Germany visiting a vendor. We went for lunch where I ordered a hamburger. My host was mortified when I lifted my hamburger to eat it. He actually insisted I eat it with a knife and fork. I wasn't eating with a stately gentleman, so this could be dismissed as somewhat patrician older generation. I was eating with someone who was maybe 8 years older than myself. Simply to maintain good relations, I did eat the remaining burger by fork and knife. I checked with other Germans of our generation who were rolling on the floor with laughter.

On the same visit, an engineer corrected my pronounciation of an English word. I immediately apologized because certainly he learned his English in school and I learned mine from my Mother. I defer to the public education.

Regards,

Erik:

Your post has reminded me of one of the first really long threads on LTH. Please forgive me for being moved to quote myself...

http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=1249#1249

I no more believe some single person invented the dish at the St. Louis World's Fair or at Louis' Lunch counter in New Haven than I believe the father of Doctor Evil invented the question mark. *

This is the address for MikeG's initial post:
http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=920#920


Ah, the good old days...



Antonius

* The post-move-character problems still need to be fixed in this thread. Lots of umlauts and ess-zeds and plain ole 'posterfees are all screwed up. I'll fix the ones in my posts if MikeG buys me a satchel of old fashioned burgers.

Antonius wrote:Erik:

Your post has reminded me of one of the first really long threads on LTH. Please forgive me for being moved to quote myself...

I no more believe some single person invented the dish at the St. Louis World's Fair or at Louis' Lunch counter in New Haven than I believe the father of Doctor Evil invented the question mark. *

I am merely the messenger, but fire away.

E.M.

Note that this birthday site also immediately backtracks from the idea that Louis' Lunch was the first hamburger... I stick to my opinion, that there may have been Hamburger steaks on buns, and there may have been men from Hamburg cooking them in Homburgs for all I know, but a hamburger that absolutely rejects the presence of mustard (as Louis' does) is still a prehistoric protoburger, not the Ur-burger. The history of the true American hamburger begins the moment someone first put the canonical combination of mustard, onion and pickle on one-- not tomato, not butter, not pickled herring or anything else.

Incidentally, I was talking to Mom of Mike G about the Highlander, the 40s/50s drive-in her father operated in Wichita KS, and expounding upon the 30s Style Hamburger being 10 or 12 to the pound, when she said "Actually a Highlander was 6 to the pound."

I said, surprised, "It was a thick burger?"

"No, it was wider, sort of like Wendy's," she said. (Probably Steak & Shake comes closer, actually.)

So it's interesting that when somebody wanted to make a bigger burger, they doubled the patties (like the Big Boy and its descendants) or they widened it (like the Highlander)-- but they didn't make a thicker patty back then, both because it would have taken longer to fry if it were thicker, and because it simply wasn't what hamburgers were like then-- they were a thin patty, no matter how big in circumference.

Erik M. wrote:
I am merely the messenger, but fire away.

E.M.

Erik:

Nice link ...

No, I'm not looking to cause any trouble... You know me, 'Mr. Laid-back' ... I just wanted to reuse my Dr. Evil line...

Lebe der Hamburger!

A