The oldest burger styles you can still cook today, each with a documented place and date of origin. From a lunch wagon in New Haven to a coffee shop in Milwaukee, oldest first.
Nobody knows for sure. Several towns have a claim, none of them can be proven, and most of the stories were written down decades later. We list them side by side and don’t pick a winner.
Sources: Wikipedia, History of the hamburger ↗Oral histories say he served fried beef patties between bread at his lunch counter.
Flattened a meatball between two slices of bread at the Seymour Fair. Known locally as “Hamburger Charlie.”
Said to have swapped in ground beef when they ran out of pork sausage at the Erie County Fair.
His family says he served a beef patty on a bun on the Fourth of July. Oklahoma’s governor backed the claim in 1995.
Put ground steak between toast for a customer in a hurry. The Library of Congress credited Louis’ Lunch in 2000.
Louis Lassen opened his New Haven lunch wagon in 1895. The restaurant says he put ground steak between toast for a customer in a hurry in 1900, and the Library of Congress credited Louis’ Lunch as the creator of the hamburger in 2000. Other towns dispute the claim, and it is served on toast, since the bun came later.
Elmer Dyer opened his Memphis diner in 1912. The restaurant says it has never replaced the grease its burgers are fried in.
John Weeks began selling these burgers from a stand in Corinth around 1917. Beef was stretched with cheaper filler, and locals called them “Weeksburgers” before “slugburger” stuck.
The small, steamed, onion-smothered burger traces back to White Castle, opened in Wichita, Kansas in 1921.
Created by Ross Davis and his son Homer at the Hamburger Inn in El Reno in the 1920s, when onion stretched beef to feed railroad workers.
Believed to have started at Jack’s Lunch in Middletown in the 1920s or 1930s. Ted’s Restaurant in Meriden has served it since 1959.
Sold as street food in Havana from the 1930s and revived by Cuban cooks in Miami from the 1960s.
Solly’s Grille near Milwaukee, open since 1936, is thought to have created the butter burger.
The Owl Bar & Cafe in San Antonio, New Mexico, open since 1945, is the strongest claimant to the first green chile cheeseburger.
Matt’s Bar in south Minneapolis claims the original, spelled “Jucy Lucy”, from the 1950s. The 5-8 Club down the road disputes it.
How we date these: a year appears only when a published source gives one. Where a story has only a decade, we show the decade. Opening dates of restaurants are not the same as the first time a burger was made, and we say which is which on each burger’s page.