I can’t keep in mind the final time I noticed a burger that didn’t have a lacy edge. I do know they nonetheless exist on the market, half-pound bistro burgers oozing with juice, however these are usually not the burgers that pattern, the burgers that beckon obsession on TikTok. No, the burgers I’m instructed I would like are meaty doilies, pressed almost paper skinny, floor beef fried to a crisp.
Over the previous 5 years or so, smash burgers have grown in nationwide recognition. However 2024 was the yr they formally peaked — and possibly jumped the shark. A real creativity round incorporating new flavors into smash burgers has made the inevitable flip into a compulsory menu addition for each place that’s making an attempt to be the following large factor. It’s fairly apparent why. Smash burgers are low cost to make and satisfying to eat, as near a assured win as you will get on a menu. With diners ever stingier with their cash, and restaurant margins ever thinner, that’s more and more the one factor there’s room for.
As Sam Stone writes in Bon Appétit, smash burgers as a forward-thinking pattern (relatively than as pure Midwest nostalgia from Smashburger and Shake Shack) started in earnest in 2019, with chef Jae Lee’s New York Korean American pop-up that will morph into Nowon. Taking a look at pictures now, Nowon’s smash burger appears positively gargantuan — such top! Is that one thing resembling a quarter-inch thickness per patty? The current-day smash burger would by no means.
Each metropolis appears to have its devoted smash burger pop-ups and counters. In New York, there are chains like seventh Avenue Burger and Smashed, competing with Greenpoint’s Jubilee Market, Gotham Burger Social Membership, and Ok.O. Burger. In Los Angeles, there are locations like Heavy Handed and For the Win, sufficient that Eater LA author Mona Holmes declared town at “peak smash burger” this previous yr. Las Vegas simply welcomed smash burger spot With Love, All the time from the house owners of a neighborhood ice cream store. And in San Francisco, there are Filipino smash burgers at Bundok’s Burgers and Korean ones at Oh G Burger.
Probably the most outstanding proponent of the smash burger is in fact Hamburger America, historian George Motz’s ode to the Oklahoma onion burger variant, which opened in New York Metropolis in late 2023. The restaurant acquired two stars from the New York Occasions, with Wells praising that the burger has been “smashed more durable and flatter and longer than chains like Smashburger and seventh Avenue Burger appear to handle.” Its presence cemented the smash burger as, for the second, the final word expression of “burger.”
However smash burgers aren’t simply on the menu at devoted burger spots. Eating places with wider focus have made room for the smash burger, or pivoted into smash burgers from different ideas. Brooklyn’s Little Grenjai has turn out to be recognized for its Thai-inflected smash burger, obtainable solely throughout lunch, regardless of a full menu of Bangkok road meals classics like drunken noodles and crab fried rice. Inday All Day added an Indian halal beef smash burger with turmeric pickles and raita to its menu of curries, dosa and chaat, and KJUN, recognized for its Korean-Cajun fusions like jambalaya with strips of kimchi and gochujang andouille and grits, has a Korean-Cajun smash burger set on its lunch menu. Final yr, Mike & Patty’s in Boston launched the smash burger offshoot Up & Down. And in Kansas Metropolis, Muni serves smash burger tacos, a TikTok favourite, as a part of a Thai-Mexican fusion menu.
Do smashburgers make sense on all these menus? It relies upon. Many are properly completed (lol), changing into standout gadgets on numerous menus the best way Nowon’s did. However different instances, they really feel like apparent pattern chasing. Possibly the smash burger is an try and lure in trepidatious clients, or simply have enjoyable with one thing that’s already fashionable. However actually, smashburger tacos? Burgeritos? It seems like they simply wished to place a buzzy phrase on the menu and hope revenue adopted.
Smashburgers style good, as anybody who has heard of the Maillard response can breathlessly clarify. However CSK in Chicago, a former neighborhood restaurant that just lately reopened as a smash burger spot, maybe illuminates why they’ve proliferated. Proprietor Erik Baylis described CSK to Eater Chicago as a “quick-service, recession-proof spot for anybody from a bunch of college children to a household of 5.” Smash burgers are the type of meals that appeals to the widest potential group of individuals (save vegetarians). Children like them, adults like them, and though beef costs are excessive, floor beef continues to be within the realm of inexpensive. Plus it’s not such as you want that a lot to make one.
What’s extra, beef conveys each luxurious and worth, whether or not or not it truly is both. It’s excessive in energy and protein, and in case you solely have a restricted amount of cash to spend, it intuitively looks as if the very best bang in your buck. At Oh G burger, a bulgogi beef, hen or Unattainable smash burger are all the identical value, and at Little Grenjai, a single smash burger is the most cost effective merchandise on the menu (aside from a aspect of plain rice). However its affordability all the time looks as if not only a deal, however a deal with. This comes from the identical animal as steak, that everlasting avatar of wealthy dwelling. Why order the hen when for a similar value — and even cheaper — you’ll be able to mainly get filet mignon?
The ubiquity of the smash burger isn’t the one proof that each diners and eating places are extra drawn to the familiarly scrumptious than risking the brand new. In all places serves pizza and spaghetti, riffs on quick meals favorites, Caesar salads and fries. A smash burger is only a cheeseburger with extra soften and crunch, a staple with all our favourite components amped up, and but often made as low cost as potential. We all know it’ll be good, possibly even nice, earlier than we even take a chunk. And even when it’s not that nice, we received’t have wasted a day’s wages on it. In order eating places recession-proof their menus, we’ll see extra of the identical, till everyone seems to be so busy serving consolation meals classics with nontraditional flavors that we received’t have the ability to inform them aside. Or simply till, like all developments, it’s not the assure it as soon as was.