Some rotten meat, a little barn dust, and voila.

I figure I'll start right in the middle of fast food history with the popularization of the hamburger in the United States in the 20's. The hamburger, as we know it, a ground meat patty between 2 buns apparently came from Germany about 50 years earlier. It was a quite an ugly affair, being raw ground meat served with seasonings on bread rolls. Of course, if you go way back to Medieval times, you'll find the happy go lucky Tartars placing beef under their saddles to get tenderized (Jesus) while they rode along. This too, was eaten raw.

But hamburger like meals were being served by the turn of the century all over the States. Often as cheap food at fairs when meat of some kind (often low grade and highly seasoned to give it taste and kill the background flavours) was served on a roll. However, there are two claimants to the first burger title who, no doubt dispute the quality angle. One is Louis's Lunch. A diner owned by Louis Lassen of New Haven Connecticut, and the other claim is from the Menches brothers of Hamburg (gimme a break) New York. A ground beef patty served on a bun at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair is probably the first to have a national audience however.

Since I'm dwelling on burgers for now, the next logical step is to a burger only affair, and to that we must meet Billy Ingram and J. Walter Anderson, founders of White Castle.

We'll actually meet them next post. Get out your napkins. And yeah, those guys up above sat on meat.