Burgerfest hits Hamburg this weekend

blog by Kathryn Przybyla • July 19, 2012 @ 8:00am

As skeptical as I may be that the hamburger was actually invented in Hamburg, you can’t argue with a good thing.

One of America’s greatest grilled foods, the hamburger will be celebrated in all its glory at Burgerfest, held in Hamburg, N.Y.

According to Burgerfest,

In 1885 vendors from Ohio, Frank and Charles Menches, established a food concession at what was to be later named the Erie County Fair. Their specialty was a sliced, grilled sausage patty served on a round bun. Running out of their sausage, they sought a local butcher who only had ground beef readily available.

They mixed spices with the meat, including brown sugar and coffee, and made patties to fit the round buns. The coffee after-taste kept patrons returning for more of this new sandwich. A local reporter, noting the excitement, asked the brothers what this new sensation was called. Without much hesitation, they named it the hamburger after the town they were in, Hamburg, NY.

Festivities kick off at noon this Saturday at Main and Buffalo Streets in Hamburg.

Other entertainment includes live music, burger eating contest, classic car show and a highly anticipated “burgers, beds and buns” race.

For more information and a complete schedule of events, check out the Burgerfest website. If that doesn’t excite you enough for a beef patty, check out these five fun facts about burgers, below.

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Photo courtesy of Facebook.

TAGGED: buffalo burgers, burgerfest, festival, food, hamburg, hamburgers, main and buffalo

Kathryn Przybyla

Comments

Rachel July 19, 2012 @ 11:37am

Coincidentally, I’m currently reading a book about the history of foods brought to America by immigrants in the 19th Century. It describes a typical meal at a German lunch room in NYC as including “Hamburger steak, a form of ground beef ‘redeemed from its original toughness by being mashed into mincemeat and then formed into a conglomerated mass.’ This not-too-appetizing description is among the earliest reference to a future American staple, the hamburger…”
Ben Kirst July 19, 2012 @ 1:53pm

Malcom Gladwell wrote about “innovation multiples” a few years ago. He was referring to stuff like telephones and chemistry but it seems like that happened with hamburgers as well. A bunch of places claiming to be the home of the hamburger seem to trace it back to the mid-1880s…and one theory is that once these individual burger places hit the World’s Fair in Chicago (1886?), the whole country had the opportunity to be exposed to hamburger-y goodness. But Rachel’s probably right, I’d bet it started with the Germans who came to America and it just kind of evolved into Kobe burgers and double quarter-pounders.

(http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_gladwell)