A Hamburger Today- aht.seriouseats.com

Fried Onion Burger Festival in El Reno, Oklahoma

Posted by Robyn Lee, April 30, 2009 at 10:30 AM

This Saturday, May 2, marks the 21st Annual Fried Onion Burger Festival in El Reno, Oklahoma, home state of the onion burger. Head to downtown El Reno from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. for music performances, carnival games, a car show, and plenty of onion burgers, including a kiddie pool-sized "Big Burger." Visit NewsOK.com for a video of onion burgers in the making.

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Tagged: El Reno, events, Oklahoma, onion burgers

In Talk, History of the Theta Burger

Posted by Robyn Lee, October 30, 2008 at 10:00 AM

Photograph of Theta Burger from Irma's Burger Shack from Cranberry Drops on Flickr

Last week on our Talk boards, Serious Eats member FoodPorncess asked about the history of the Theta Burger, a burger topped with barbecue sauce (also known as Hickory Sauce), shredded cheddar cheese, mayonnaise, and dill pickle slices. SE member holdthemayo says that the burger may have originated at the now closed Split-T in Oklahoma City.

Today you can find it in many restaurants in Oklahoma; a bit of searching revealed it on the menus of Johnnie's Charcoal Broiler (started by Johnnie Haynes, who used to manage the Split-T), Irma's Burger Shack, Interurban, Henry Hudson's, and Billy's On The Square to name a few. It's seemingly nonexistent outside of Oklahoma, although in Texas it's served at Hut's Hamburgers in Austin and Scotty P's as a barbecue cheeseburger (multiple locations).

The only information I could find about the origin of the burger's name is from this review of Johnny's Burgers & More where a commenter says it's named after the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority.

Does anyone else have more information about the Theta Burger?

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Tagged: burger history, Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, Theta Burger

The Burger Birthplace Battle: New Haven Fires Back

Posted by Adam Kuban, February 5, 2007 at 3:39 PM

Photograph from the Flickr photostream of the real janelle

Remember all that hullaballo about the birthplace of the burger? How New Haven, Connecticut, and Athens, Texas, were going back and forth on this? How Josh "Mr. Cutlets" Ozersky wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times about this? Well, New Haven just fired a retaliatory nah-nah-boo-boo strike:

Nobody disputes that Louis' has served its hamburgers longer than any other restaurant. The oldest continuously published newspaper in America thereby declares the oldest continuing hamburger joint in America the authentic one. So there.

Hamburger Hooey [Hartford Courant; via Barry Popik. Thanks, Barry!]

MORE ON LOUIS' LUNCH
Here's a video we produced over on Serious Eats about Louis' Lunch.

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Tagged: Connecticut, hamburger history, Louis' Lunch, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, video

Photo Gallery: Hamburgers, A Pictorial History

Posted by Adam Kuban, May 18, 2006 at 10:00 AM

Yesterday, we used a photograph of a farmer eating a burger at a cornhusking contest in Marshall County, Iowa, to illustrate an entry here. It's from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog. Below, we offer a look at other noteworthy burger photos we dug up from the available online collection.

Most of the photos here were taken by Russell Lee (right; 1903–1986), who was invited to join the federally funded Farm Security Administration as part of a team of photographers charged with documenting the plight of the rural poor during the Depression. (Esther Bubley, Jack Delano, and Arthur Rothstein, whose photos are also represented below, were members of the project as well.)

These photos are truly a fascinating scrapbook of hamburger—and American—history, and they're available for reproduction online at the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Reading Room (search the catalog for "hamburger"). Dig in!

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Tagged: art, California, hamburger history, Iowa, Louisiana, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, photo gallery, recommended