Historians have suggested that the hamburger can be traced back to one of many possible origins, including: ancient Rome; the 1747 cookbook "The Art of Cookery” by Hannah Glasse; recipes for frikadelle, a smashed panfried meatball popular in German, Polish and Nordic cuisines; the mid-19th-century wave of German immigration - especially from Hamburg - to the United States; the invention of the meat grinder in the 19th century; and Louis’ Lunch, the place that the Library of Congress credits with serving the first fried ground-beef patty sandwiched between two slices of bread in 1900. It’s the bread that trips most people up. Can a hamburger be a hamburger if it isn’t served in a bun? If you’re in this camp, you might say the first hamburger, as we know it today, was invented in 1916 by Walt Anderson, a short-order cook from Kansas who went on to co-found White Castle.
Regardless, nearly a full century after Anderson’s burger hit the market, Matt Rodbard, editor in chief of Taste Cooking - and a friend and former editor of mine - was at a modernist restaurant in Seoul when he was served what looked a lot like a hamburger patty. "The closing savory course was tteokgalbi. It was kind of basic in presentation, though delicious,” Rodbard told me recently.
He was struck by how "ground beef could be seasoned with such care. It was the best hamburger I ever had - without a bun, of course.” Rodbard has been to Korea many times since, and when he teamed up with chef Deu.
