Paparazzi Razzel Dazzeled

Did you know that the first hamburger “chain” of restaurants, founded in 1921 in Wichita, Kansas was White Castle? Fans of the little steam-fried square burgers with onions and pickles call them “sliders”.

The descendants of brothers Charles and Frank Menches are one of many parties claiming a connection to the very first American hamburger. Supposedly, the Menches served a ground beef sandwich in 1885 at a fair in Hamburg, New York.

Looking for a bit of exotic flavor? Wings chefs have found plenty of ways to brings tastes from around the world to your wings. For example, you can find Jamaican jerk wings, cajun wings, Thai chili wings, or even wings with a Caribbean flair.

Wing sales go up 50% at restaurants during football season, with more than double that amount being consumed by football fans during the Super Bowl. They’re a huge seller on restaurant menus all over during the fall and winter seasons.

Did you know that fears associated with eating tomatoes delayed the rise in popularity of ketchup? Throughout most of the 19th century, Americans largely avoided tomatoes because they thought they may be poisonous.

Minneapolis is home to a rich, cheesy burger known as the Juicy Lucy. In the 1950s, a customer asked a bar owner to prepare a hamburger with cheese on the inside. When the customer tasted it, he declared it a “juicy lucy” and a new burger was born.

While it seems like buffalo wings have long been a symbol of Americana, they are actually less than fifty years old. Most concur that the wing was invented in Buffalo, New York, in 1964.

So what is the collective term for wings? Is it a bunch; a mess; a passel? Maybe a basket, but what if they are on plate? The best term we can come up with for an order of wings is a flutter, as in “I would like to order a large flutter of wings.”

The invention of the hamburger is highly debated amongst food historians and burger enthusiasts. Officially in the Library of Congress Louis Lassen is the hamburger inventor who had a small lunch wagon in New Haven Connecticut and sold steak sandwiches along with hamburgers around 1900.

The 1956 Federal Highway Act signed by Dwight D. Eisenhower caused American society to become largely motorized. The drive-in restaurant, which had existed since the 1930s, became a major force in providing hamburgers to the common motorist.