The hamburger—like jazz and comic books—is a purely American art form. Don't try to argue that the hamburger was first developed in the German city of Hamburg, from which it took its name, because you will lose.
Joshua Huston
Greatness awaits, in Fife.
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Pick-Quick Drive In 4306 Pacific Hwy. E., Fife, 253-922-5599, pickquick.net. Lunch and dinner daily.
RedLine Burger Co. 20801 Hwy. 99, Lynnwood, 425-775-2252, redlineburgers.com. 11 a.m.–8 p.m. Mon.–Sat.
Zippy's Giant Burgers 1513 S.W. Holden St., 763-1347, zippysgiantburgers.com. 10:30 a.m.–9 p.m. Mon.–Fri.; 11 a.m.–9 p.m. Sat.; noon–7 p.m. Sun.
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A "Hamburg steak"—made of chipped, dried beef, onions, and damp bread crumbs—was survival rations aboard ship when sailors on the Hamburg America Line (and some of the immigrants riding along) ran out of hardtack, salt pork, biscuits, weevils, and rat stew. It was loved only in the way the Irish love coddle or the French a nice tête de veau—as a memory of a time when one hot meal of boiled pork scraps or a calf's head with rough mustard was all that stood between them and starvation. This muddled concoction of low-grade beef, spice, bread, and onions didn't become a hamburger until it touched American shores, and even then was more closely related to what we'd call a Salisbury steak than a proper burger.
A proper burger must come as a sandwich, either between bread or in the middle of a bun. It must be the kind of thing one can eat on the move, because the history of the hamburger is also a history of motion in the United States. This is why the oft-quoted (though likely false) claim that the first hamburger in America was served at Delmonico's in New York City is wrong, and the counter-claim of the Clipper Restaurant in San Fernando, California, serving one in 1871 is also wrong. They served (or might have served) Hamburg steaks; and while much scholarship has been devoted to the quest to find the First Hamburger in America, it is all misguided. Hamburger-the-meat is different from hamburger-the-sandwich, and hamburger-the-sandwich is different still from the cheeseburger, which stands today as the ultimate expression of the form.
The modern American hamburger wasn't truly born until the day Ray Kroc got it in his head to rent a single-engine airplane and a pilot and fly all over the country looking for elementary schools and grocery stores that didn't yet have a McDonald's restaurant close by. There's just something about that kind of voracious drive for conquest that gave the burger its stamp of honest Americanness. But the world's first hamburger sandwich can arguably be attributed to Hamburger Charlie: Charles Nagreen of Seymour, Wisconsin, who one day in 1885 went to the Outagamie County Fair with an oxcart full of meatballs to sell. When that failed, he started squishing them between two slices of bread and handing them out as sandwiches. History does not say that he made a fortune doing so, but it's fun to imagine he did.
Ever since that moment, people have been arguing over who has the best burger. Arguing over burgers is what Americans have instead of tribal wars or violent battles over religion. If God and John Madden hadn't gotten together in the 1970s and invented modern football, we'd likely all be spending our Sunday afternoons watching highly organized teams of burger-flippers beating the ever-loving shit out of each other kill-the-carrier-style on some kind of weekly televised Best Burger showdown.
Still, even without National Hamburger League cookoffs to amuse us, we can continue to argue about these things. And do, as evidenced by the Blog-o-Land scrapping over who has the best burger in Washington after Pick-Quick in Fife got tagged by USA Today as serving the Platonic ideal of hamburgers. Most people agreed that Pick-Quick was good. Most people also had very firm ideas about who did a burger better. And last week, I decided to see for myself who deserves to wear the crown.
Pick-Quick Drive In is barely even a restaurant. It's more like an elf house with meat and lots of women inside, all working to turn out burgers, fries, and shakes with amazing speed and accuracy.
Pick-Quick opened in 1949, as the cheeseburger was becoming a dietary staple and frying itself hard into the American subconscious. People were driving a lot, traveling, moving into cities, out to suburbs, off farms and into towns. And whenever they moved, they needed food. Hamburgers were perfect—they could be made fast and cheaply, served hot, and eaten on the go. It didn't take much to open a hamburger stand: just a hut, a grill, some beef, and bread. This was before the big chains started to push everyone out of business, back in the day where virtually every town, every neighborhood, every crossroads, had its own unique burger place. Pick-Quick was one of those.
Over the years, nothing and everything about the place has changed. It's gone through more shifts in ownership than most people can remember, yet still serves a menu that would be recognizable to the customers who frequented it in 1949. Prices have gone up, but the location has stayed the same. It was popular back then and remains so today, doing nothing but walk-up business through a single window and offering a seating area that looks kind of like a cemetery, with bunches of flowers and picnic tables on a verdant, grassy patch out back.
