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★ ★ ★ T h e h a m b u r g e r is a symbol of everything that makes America great. Straightforward, egalitarian, substantial, and good-natured, it is also a little bloody at times.

It may come big and ungarnished, the East Coast ideal, tender and untroubled by bones or gristle, everything you look for in a filet mignon but seldom find. It may be the West Coast model, swelling with vegetation, brimming with health and well-being, piled high with all that a seed catalog can provide. A great burger, regardless of regional di≠erences, instills a sense of optimism and fulfillment, that all is right at the table or the counter or the woodgrain, screwed-to-the-floor, fast-food booth.

At its best, it eliminates the need for conversation or the urge to glance up at the TV over the bar. If you find yourself eating silently, eyes closed, ignoring everything around you, even the unavoidable burger-joint din, you have come upon a burger that can be pro-nounced a success.

Of course, it must be molded by hand, artfully seared, and o≠ered medium-rare. If that’s too much to ask, not overcooked would be nice. Whose idea was it anyway that serving desiccated burgers to Americans would enable all of us to spring back to health? Excessive reliance on condiments is another alarming development, especially in the mat-ter of ketchup, the burger Band-Aid. Ketchup is valuable only when an emergency jolt of moisture, sweetness, acidity, and flavor is required. No hamburger is inedible if you put enough ketchup on it, but no ham-burger that has ketchup on it can be considered great. Mustard is a mis-take, unless you’re French and welcome a vinegary jolt with your food, while pickles, those subversive little sweet and sour instruments, fill me with dread. When I find pickles furtively inserted into my burger, I gen-erally look to the heavens with a clenched fist and sob, “Why?”

I’ve always claimed I’d go a long way for the right burger, and in-deed I did. I traveled 23,750 miles—that’s just 1,152 miles short of en-circling the globe at the equator—looking for the best ones in America. I consumed more than 150,000 calories but resisted drinking a can of soda with every burger, saving more than 22,000 calories that way.

I ate crazy burgers, Kobe burgers, bison burgers, longhorn bur-gers, ostrich burgers, onion burgers, lamb burgers, and of course, cheeseburgers. (Note that cheese goes so well with burgers that the word is assembled di≠erently, with no space in between.) I tried fast-food burgers, and while there’s a sameness to them that overwhelms any attempts at excellence, I found some mighty fine values on those dollar menus, assuming you don’t mind your bur-gers hard and dry, like the smiles on the faces of the teenagers who take your order. I visited Burger Heaven. Actually, I went to a few places called that. I was also in burger hell, which is Milwaukee, home of the butter burger, essentially meat saturated with grease.

My goal was to find the twenty best burgers, and with apolo-gies to all the restaurants, stands, bars, and grills I missed, I’d like to believe I did well. I ate 162 burgers in ninety-three establishments. Some of them were fancified, pro≠ering foie gras–stu≠ed burgers costing as much as $29. Some were dumps, with burgers hovering near a buck. At no time, despite pleas from loved ones, did I have a physician standing by. I found no correlation between price and tastiness, nor did ambience count for a great deal. A burger requires only a cook of modest accom-plishments, one who knows enough to remove it from the fire before it has lost its juiciness and not to press down hard with a spatula—squishing might work with grilled cheese, but it’s fatal for burgers. Waitresses who work in burger joints can have scars and tattoos, as long as they’re not self-inflicted. Motorcycles are fine, provided they’re not parked inside.

To be precise, I visited ninety-five places, but I didn’t eat at two. In Boston, I attempted lunch at Tim’s Bar and Grill, which fea-tures a huge rubber garbage pail in the dining area. The waitress was so surly (“If you don’t like the service, you can leave”) that I walked out. Where’d you find your decorator, Tim, at the sanita-tion department? I also undertook a 360-mile round-trip drive to Little Compton, Rhode Island, to try the burger at the legendary Commons Lunch, only to find that it had burned down.

Boards

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★ ★ ★ T h e 2 0 H a m b u r g e r s Yo u M u s t E a t B e f o r e Yo u D i eA l a n R i c h m a n t r a v e l e d 2 3 , 7 5 0 m i l e s a n d c o n s u m e d m o r e t h a n 1 5 0 , 0 0 0 c a l o r i e s

w h i l e t a k i n g t h e m e a s u r e o f 1 6 2 b u r g e r s a c r o s s t h e c o u n t r y — w i t h o n e g o a l : t o f i n d y o u t h e

b e s t d a m n e d a s s e m b l a g e o f g r o u n d b e e f a n d b u n s t h i s c o u n t r y s e r v e s u p

T h e 2 0 H a m b u r g e r s Yo u M u s t E a t B e f o r e Yo u D i e Yo u M u s t E a t B e f o r e Yo u D i e Yo u M u s t E a t B e f o r e Yo u D i e

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★ ★ ★ P h i l a d e l p h i a ’ s

R o u g e B u r g e r i s

t h e c h e e s e b u r g e r

a t i t s b e s t .

JUL BURGER lo;34.indd 127 5/31/05 12:44:21 PM

In the course of my travels, I learned to love the bun. Bunless, a burger is merely a chopped steak, the food of mess halls and chow lines, prisons and cafeterias. The roll makes the burger, although it must not be too large or too obtrusive; a common error of steak houses, which rarely o≠er memorable burgers, is that they buy buns so big, fat, and tall that their burgers assume the dimensions of wedding cakes. A bun may be lightly toasted or grilled, but it is vital that it be fresh. I am also possessed of newfound respect for the onion, which is rarely esteemed. A few thin circles of mild raw onion add sweetness and crunch. Noth-ing else is needed on a burger, although cheese has its place.

★ ★ ★ I t o o k m y f a t h e r to a roadhouse specializing in burgers in South Miami, a decision I regretted. The parking lot was practically rubble, overgrown with weeds. He was unable to use his walker, but we finally made it into Bill & Ted’s Tavern with me half-lifting him and apologizing for being an inconsiderate son.

We ordered, and I’ll never forget the glow when he bit into his burger after years of assisted-living cuisine. I thought the burgers were slightly overcooked, but the onion-relish-pickle package was brilliantly balanced, a condiment tour de force, and when I asked him why he was so happy, he said, “I never get to eat food like this.”

The burger, fare not favored by institutional nutritionists, invari-ably inspires a≠ection. It brings back memories of backyard barbe-cues and family gatherings, and it comes in all sizes, adding to its appeal. Burgers can be as small as a couple of ounces or as large as a full pound, although it seems that whenever restaurants dish up the largest size, they feel obligated to issue warnings. (“Try our new 1lb. burger…if you dare,” read the promo for the Burgerpalooza at the Jolly Trolley in Mamaroneck, New York.)

The oversize burger is a haunch of ground meat, hand-formed, upon which the diner happily gnaws. It is an exaggeration of America’s plenty, the banana split of sandwiches. Smaller burgers are essentially platforms for unlimited embellishments. Piled high with extras, this breed of burger is a piñata at a birthday party, a festival miniaturized.

Everybody who loves beef has a favorite burger, but hardly anybody agrees on which is best. Before heading o≠, I consulted food Web sites, food experts, and food writers. I was persuaded by a fellow I met at a food festival in Virginia to visit a restaurant outside Lawton, Okla-homa, that he promised had the best burger in America. I drove up from Dallas, more than 200 miles, to eat at Meers Store & Restaurant, located next to a bison preserve. The menu read: “All steaks & ham-burgers cooked to order,” and I had this conversation with my waiter:

me: Medium-rare, please.

him: All our burgers are well-done.

me: The menu says they’re cooked to order.

him: That means we don’t start cooking until you order it.

I had a cheeseburger anyway, and it’s a shame the cook had to ruin it, because the concept was a good one—a wide, flat burger with gooey cheese. I believe I’ve made my feelings clear about the medium-rare burger, but if the meat is particularly lean, it should be eaten rare. A well-done burger is a badly done burger, food for the meek, and if that’s the way we’re going to have our burgers, then we might as well give up trying to enjoy ourselves and make green salads our national dish.

Although I endured occasional disappointments, I never wearied of life on the hamburger highway. No matter how many burgers I ate, and I believe my daily consumption never exceeded six, no matter how full of chopped beef I was at the end of a long but satisfying day, I always woke up the next morning eager to begin again.

This is a dream of a dump, located on the site of a former

Sunoco gas station. Outside there’s assorted porcelain—toi-

lets, sinks, tubs. Most have plants in them, and a lot of the

plants look dead. Inside is a pool table, a jukebox, and tables

reminiscent of the ones at highway rest stops. The view is

magnificent, the Intracoastal Waterway at its broadest and

most dramatic. Le Tub doesn’t take

credit cards, and it has signs ev-

erywhere reinforcing that rule. I’m

surprised anybody who eats here

qualifies for a credit card.

The menu is big, and the food

isn’t bad, except for the Sirloin

Burger, which is magnificent. It’s

slowly seared on an indoor grill,

crusty on the outside, juicy inside,

always perfectly cooked. At eight

to ten ounces, it’s ideal big-burger size, and it’s shaped like

a pincushion, with sloping sides, which means you get a

nice gradient of doneness. The bun has a few poppy seeds

and looks like a kaiser roll, but it’s smaller and softer. It’s just

right for enveloping the meat, which is judiciously seasoned

and spiced, mostly with salt and pepper, I suspect. That’s all

it needs. No cheese or condiments required.

I don’t understand how this spot came to have the best

burger in America, but it does. Regardless of where I am in

South Florida, I always make my way here for lunch. I sit at

the bar and watch yachts that cost millions drift by, draped

with women who cost more, and I think to myself how lucky

I am to be at Le Tub.

( P h o t o g r a p h s b y B O B B Y F I S H E R )

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The Top 20 Burgers in America (in order of greatness)

1Le Tub

KNOW YOUR CUTS OF MEAT I’ve always believed this about burgers: The best beef is chuck, which is particularly flavorful. Ordinary ground beef is bland. Sirloin is magnificent but perhaps overly aristocratic. Ground round is almost always too dry. I also believe in the hand-formed, loosely packed burger. Preformed patties are useful but never great, because compressed meat is incapable of rising above mediocrity. Here are a few words you’ve never heard spoken at the conclusion of a meal: “That pressed food was mighty good.”

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02 | Luger BurgerP E T E R LU G E R S T E A K H O U S E B R O O K LY N

The legendary Peter Luger is celebrated for its porterhouse, which

is buttered, seared, and sliced. But consider this: Its burger (avail-

able only at lunch) may be even better than the steak.

At first glance, the roll seems too large, as it is at most steak

houses. It isn’t. The half pound of beef, so charred on the outside

it appears overcooked, isn’t. The magnificent roll settles beauti-

fully around the succulent, juicy burger, assembled from prime

aged-porterhouse trimmings and prime chuck. You can get raw

onion. Don’t. It comes with steak sauce. Superfluous. You can

have cheese. Unnecessary. There’s a bacon option. Hold on. The

bacon, three-eighths-inch thick, slightly blackened, smoky, and

chewy-tender, complements the beef the way mustard accents a

hot dog. I can never decide: With bacon? Without bacon? Both

ways are just right. The fries are among the best in America. One

warning: While you’re waiting for your burger to arrive, try not

to eat the entire basket of irresistible bread.

03 | Not Just a BurgerS P I C E D P E A R R E S TAU R A N T AT T H E

C H A N L E R H O T E L N E W P O R T, R I

This burger doesn’t taste like a burger. It’s more in the North Car-

olina pulled-pork family, even though it’s all Kobe beef. (Kobe beef

has a lot of the qualities of pork—it’s soft and sweet.) Chef Richard

Hamilton, who has big-time talent, makes the best high-concept

burger in America. His roll, which is a bit towering,

worried me at first, but it flattened beautifully and

didn’t get in the way. The burger, which consists of

barbecued Kobe brisket surrounded by chopped

Kobe beef, is topped with enormously complex but

not overpowering coleslaw and sits on a tomato-on-

ion jam that’s sort of a cross between ketchup and

barbecue sauce.

The twelve-ounce creation isn’t so much a

juicy burger as a mouthwatering, heart-stop-

ping, wildly rich chopped-beef sandwich every

bit as satisfying as the best sandwich you’ve ever

eaten down south. It’s a burger breakthrough,

and the accompanying garlic-basil-Parmesan

potato chips are awe-inspiring.

04 | Rouge BurgerR O U G E P H I L A D E L P H I A

The clientele appears to consist primarily of aging men

of means, each one accompanied by an Eastern European

model/actress. (Who knew that white slavery lived on in

stuffy old Philadelphia?) Do these people care that they’re

eating the best cheeseburger in America? Rouge is so chic I’m

surprised that anybody pays attention to the food. I’m sure

they admire the staff, all in black. They probably enjoy sitting

outside, right on Rittenhouse Square. Back when I was grow-

ing up in the city, outdoor dining didn’t exist.

How is a simple, plump cheeseburger able to compete with

all this stylishness? The Rouge Burger does just fine. The

aged Gruyère cheese is strong, nutty, and pungent. The cara-

melized onion is judiciously applied. The bread is toasted bri-

oche. The fries are good. The well-salted sirloin is very lean,

so it’s best ordered rare. I could swear the hostess, to stand

out from her minions, was wearing pink pajamas, but maybe

I was dizzy with pleasure from dining at Rouge and encoun-

tering a Philadelphia I never knew.

05 | Kobe SlidersB A R C L AY P R I M E P H I L A D E L P H I A

A slider is the small and rather grotesque (but nonethe-

less tasty) burger bagged by the bunch at White Castle. The

meat in a genuine slider is square, steam-fried, overdone,

and punctured with tiny holes, as though it

had been attacked by a vampire. Hamburgers

on naval vessels are sometimes called sliders.

All in all, sliders aren’t esteemed in the gastro-

nomic firmament.

At Barclay Prime, a new steak house, the

small burgers are inexplicably referred to as

sliders, but they’re not sliders at all. They’re

a mighty three inches tall. Each is made with

two ounces of Kobe beef, and they come two

to an order, on miniature, exceptionally but-

tery brioche buns. One is topped with sliced

tomato and marinated shallots, the other

with caramelized onion and Gruyère. They

may be the most succulent burgers in America,

BEST ONION RINGS

1Red Mill Burgers,

Seattle2

Krazy Jim’s Blimpyburger, Ann Arbor, MI

3New York

Burger Co., New York City

★ ★ ★ Fr o m l e f t , I n t r a c o a s t a l i n d u l g e n c e a t L e Tu b ; a l u n c h t i m e fa v o r i t e i n B r o o k l y n ; Ko b e s l i d e r s t h a t o u t w e i g h t h e i r n a m e .

2Peter

Luger

5Barclay

Prime

FRIES DON’T FLYIf burgers are the great triumph of casual cuisine, French fries are the major disappointment. The perfect fry, medium thick, made from fresh potatoes, crisp, and golden brown, is a rarity. Most fries are thin and taste of little but oil and salt, or they’re thick and taste of freezer burn. And they’re rarely hot. The best fries come from Peter Luger in Brooklyn. I know women say a good man is hard to find, but a good fry is harder.

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1Le Tub

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and they’re automatically prepared medium-rare.

I asked our waiter why a steak house would have a need

for sliders, and he replied proudly, “They’re like little protein

appetizers. It’s amazing how perfectly they get the palate

ready for a big steak.”

06 | California BurgerH O U S T O N ’ S S A N TA M O N I C A

When you figure how many millions of burgers emerge from

chain-restaurant kitchens, it’s not surprising that one of them

gets it right. Houston’s, a big, bustling, commercial spot, nails

its California Burger.

This burger had no flaws. Zero. The roll: soft and sweet,

almost like brioche. The meat: coarsely ground and flavorful.

The red onion: mild and crunchy. The cheese: fully melted

Monterey Jack. The condiment: a touch of mustard-honey

dressing. Avocado and arugula are another great touch.

Houston’s California Burger is a rainbow of colors, and it’s

comforting, perfect for soothing Santa Monica working stiffs

after a hard morning at the macramé shop. And talk about

burger engineering. I asked the manager about the sliver of

greenery under the burger, and he said it was cabbage, put

there to avoid untoward sogginess at the base of the bun.

07 | Buckhorn BurgerB U C K H O R N S A N A N T O N I O , N M

No burger has bigger flavors than the legendary New Mexico

green-chili cheeseburger. Basically, it’s too much of every-

thing on a bun: ground beef, green chilies, mustard, tomato,

lettuce, chopped onion, and pickle. Such a combination

makes no culinary sense, but at Buckhorn, which makes the

best green-chili cheeseburgers in a tiny town devoted to little

else, the result is spectacularly tasty and eminently coherent.

The too strong onions, hot-pungent chilies, and potent mus-

tard all battle to a spectacular draw. The cheese is the binder

and the pickle the crunchy refresher, while the lettuce and

tomato hang on for dear life and the coarsely ground beef

acts as a solid, sensible underpinning.

Buckhorn tavern, which naturally calls its green-chili

cheeseburger a Buckhorn Burger, offers a great mouthful

of hot, sweet, juicy, chewy flavors. It’s the ultimate in a

burger with a burn.

08 | HamburgerM I L L E R ’ S B A R D E A R B O R N , M I

Miller’s is a blockhouse of a bar, gloomy outside and not

much better inside. It appears to be a place where people

vanish and don’t reappear for days, but locals don’t come

here to drink. The day I visited, everybody was bellied up to

the bar, eating burgers.

They’re made from ground round, which is lean and usu-

ally flavorless. Here it’s been used for burgers since the ’50s,

so I was willing to try one, figuring Miller’s might know

something I didn’t. I ended up eating three. I ordered the

first medium-rare, and it was very good, made from the juici-

est round I’ve ever tasted. I ordered the second rare, and it

was sensational. The cheeseburger, topped with Velveeta, a

variation on American cheese, was darned good, too. When I

asked my waitress what made the burger so special, she sug-

gested it might be the well-seasoned grill, which had been

replaced only once in the fifteen years she’d worked there.

Miller’s has no menu, no tomatoes, no lettuce, no plates, no

utensils, and no check—it’s all on the honor system. When I

asked the bartender to explain the fortress-like look, he told

me with a straight face that cars speeding down Michigan

Avenue were always crashing into the building, so the owners

decided to make it impregnable.

09 | CheeseburgerB U R G E R J O I N T, L E PA R K E R M E R I D I E N H O T E L

N E W Y O R K C I T Y

This spot is supposed to look like a small-town ’50s burger

hangout, but it doesn’t. It looks like a small-town ’50s pizza

hangout. (Burger joints had more chrome.) Still, it’s master-

fully geeky, with hideous fake-wood paneling. I thought a

particularly nice touch was a Christmas wreath in June.

The burgers, however they’re ordered, will have you danc-

ing the jitterbug. The day I stopped in, a hotel chef by the

name of Rudi—the name was stitched on his fancy chef ’s

whites—was cooking, and he got them exactly right. The

plain burger on an Arnold bun was the essence of classic sim-

plicity. The cheeseburger with the works—tomato, lettuce,

onion, pickle, ketchup, mayo, and mustard—was even better,

especially when the counterman didn’t overdo the mustard-

mayo-ketchup amalgam. (Very few restaurants leave the

★ ★ ★ F r o m l e f t , M i l l e r ’ s s e a s o n e d g r i l l a t w o r k ; a h o t e l b u r g e r t h a t N e w Yo r k e r s a r e a c t u a l l y w i l l i n g t o w a i t f o r .

WORST BURGERSolly, may he rest in grease, is credited with inventing the butter burger, a much loved, much praised regional specialty. I walked into Solly’s Grille near Milwaukee and asked for my burger with sautéed onion.

I’m guessing, but I’d say it came with close to a half stick of butter that soaked into the bun and the burger and finally pooled on the plate. It was like slurping dairy drainage. Wisconsin, the Dairy State, should be renamed the Death-by-Dairy State.

8Miller’s Bar

9burger

joint

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BEST BURGER-JOINT BARMAIDI told her I didn’t care for beer, which is true. She asked me what I liked to drink with my burger. I said, “Champagne.” She drew a Craftsman Saison, telling me it was like sparkling white wine. She was right. She worked her way down the bar, turning weak Perrier men into strong beer drinkers. Christmas Collins, bartender at Father’s Office in Santa Monica, is the burger’s best friend.

vital job of accessorizing to customers.) The burger joint has

quickly become a Manhattan icon, where persons of all eco-

nomic stations gather to eat in peace. Or maybe it’s more like

a jungle watering hole, where the animals wait until they’ve

departed before they start tearing one another apart.

10 | Number FiveK E L L E R ’ S D R I V E - I N D A L L A S

The lady in the red Lexus that was parked alongside me

leaned out the window and said, “If you come here with a

friend who has a convertible, you can sit all night. It’s better

than going to a nice restaurant.” Keller’s, out on Northwest

Highway, is the best drive-in I’ve ever seen, and I try not

to miss many. Flash your lights and out come the carhops,

who aren’t dolled up and aren’t on roller skates, although

they will call you “sweetie.” They’re also strong enough to

lug cases of beer out to waiting cars. (Not many restaurants

specialize in beer by the case.)

Keller’s is filled with guys hanging out. They sit on the tail-

gates of their pickups, feet up on coolers. The burger of choice

is the Number Five, made exactly the way hamburgers were

back when drive-ins first appeared, about a half-century ago.

At $2.38, it’s not priced a whole lot more than it would have

been back then. The Number Five includes two beef patties,

shredded lettuce, tomato, American cheese, and a Thousand

Island–style “special sauce” on a soft grilled poppy-seed role.

The meat’s overcooked, but that doesn’t diminish the nostal-

gia, maybe the best in the burger world. Keller’s even has a

galvanized tin roof to protect cars. I suggested to my wait-

ress, Lana, that it probably sounded awfully loud

when it rained. “It’s not so bad,” she replied, “but

you should hear it when it hails.”

11 | Grilled Bistro BurgerB I S T R O D O N G I OVA N N I N A PA , C A

Although this supremely cute spot does everything

skillfully, I don’t recommend ordering your burger

any which way but plain. It’s just too good to dress

up with grilled onion or cheese or garlic-mayonnaise.

The meat is chuck, and the roll a subdued version

of focaccia, which is bread brushed with olive oil

and sprinkled with salt. The burger is perfectly

cooked on an indoor mesquite grill, and not much food is

more delicious than that. Sure, you can charcoal-grill at

home, but then you have to worry about famished neighbors

climbing over your fence.

12 | HamburgerB O B CAT B I T E S A N T E F E

Although Bobcat Bite is famous for its green-chili cheese-

burger, its best burger comes unadorned and is a mix of chuck

and sirloin, the perfect blend. My admiration for this burger

may also have been elevated by the tiny restaurant’s unsur-

passed ambience. It stands between the Jemez Mountains

and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, which glow red when

reflecting the setting sun. While I was waiting for a table, some

kindly locals pointed out the high-desert flora to me. Or maybe

it was the fauna. I think one is meat, the other condiments.

13 | CheeseburgerW H I T E M A N N A H A C K E N S A C K , N J

The burgers here are small, and when I asked what the re-

cord was for the most eaten at one sitting, the grill cook

told me that some guy had managed thirty-two. I was awed,

not because somebody ate thirty-two burgers of about two

ounces each but that this superhero also ate thirty-two

potato rolls, and they looked full-size to me. New Jersey is

one manly state. It’s also a legendary diner state, boasting

some of the best in America. White Manna is a 1930s artifact

with a horseshoe-shaped counter that seats twelve. In the

middle of the horseshoe stands the grill cook, behaving like

a sushi chef, molding, cooking, handing out the

burgers. Ask for cheese and onion and the too-

big roll fills up amazingly well.

14 | HamburgerJ . G . M E LO N N E W Y O R K C I T Y

“The best burger is the one you want the minute

your plane touches down after you’ve been in

Europe for three months,” said a friend of mine,

an Upper East Sider with the money to do ex-

actly that. “For me, this is the one.” J.G. Melon’s

burger is a Manhattan benchmark. The bun is

nicely toasted. The

BEST MILK SHAKE

1Burger Joint,

San Francisco2

The Counter, Santa Monica

3Soup Burg,

New York City

★ ★ ★ Fr o m l e f t , a o n e - o f - a - k i n d c o n c o c t i o n ; a C o u n t e r w a i t r e s s s e r v e s u p a s i m p l e r c o m b o ; C o n n e c t i c u t ’s c l a i m t o fa m e .

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T H E G Q & A : C A P T A I N A M E R I C A C O N T I N U E D

“Tell me about American humor. What should I know?” He was my coach.

Milton Berle was your humor coach?Yes!

Insane. What did he teach you?Timing. Rhythm. How to deliver jokes.

Did he give you jokes?He gave me thousands of jokes for every occasion. Birthday parties, this party, that party. He had a whole file in his head. Yes, I was really serious about learning jokes. I knew I had to make people laugh.

Did he write them down for you?Yes. Then we’d sit down and he’d say, “Here’s how you deliver this line.”

So he gave you a master class in jokes?Oh, I was over at his house all the time. Be-cause I was interested in American humor. And Austrian humor is…

Wait, Austrians have humor?Very funny. Yes, great humor, but it’s quite di≠erent. The more south you go in Europe, the more they like to joke and drink and sing. The more north you go, the less it’s like that.

Just like America.It’s with the temperature. It’s all weather related.

What’s a good Milton Berle line?This is not one he gave me, but I remember at my engagement party, he said, “Arnold is the illegitimate child of Gloria Allred and Kurt Waldheim.” All this crazy stu≠.

Has the pope called you yet?No.

But aren’t you guys all in the same club? Powerful, Germanic…I’m Austrian.

Austrian, German, it’s all the same to me. Do you guys ever get sick of World War II jokes, the Colonel Klink shtick?No, because I understand it. I use those jokes myself. I think there is a history that can go two ways. You can look back and get upset about it, or you can make fun of it. I remember when I used to walk into the gym, the owner, Joe Gold, would say, “The Boys from Brazil are here.” People would click their heels or make the Nazi hand ges-ture, and it took me a while to catch on to what they were doing, but I did.

Did you ever think about losing the accent in order to blend in better? Not that a guy built like you could blend in.…Yes! The German accent was the evil accent. It’s one thing when you have the French ac-cent and women go, Ooh. But with German,

“Ja, raus, Schwein!” It’s like, what’s this all about? So I had to make people more famil-iar with it. In the ’70s, when they tested my accent for movies, 60 percent of the people were scared. That’s why I couldn’t get a commercial. I was supposed to do a 7-Up commercial with Loni Anderson, Diet 7-Up, in like ’78, but in the test, people al-ways said, “This voice gave me the chills.” [laughs] But I decided what I have to do is make people not afraid of it, so I would go to as many interviews as possible and get them familiar with my way of talking, and maybe then they will accept it. And at some point they will love it. It has turned out that it has become a big asset. It’s one of those things where I am in an elevator talking to someone and someone doesn’t even see me, but they turn around and say, “This must be Arnold!” It’s so identifiable. It is me.

That’s pretty wild.And then Hans and Franz come along, but they took it so much to the extreme that I started imitating them. I’m going around saying to people, “Yah, yah, girlie man with your love handles. Look, I can pull your love handles over your head and use them like a little shopping bag.” So what I did is just be out there and make my voice, my ac-cent, part of America.

How do you think history will remember you?I don’t care.

You? That’s crap. I never put that much time on that. One thing is clear: Whatever I do, I rattle the cage. With bodybuilding, I took it on myself

to make it as respected as any other sport. We went after that. Books. Promotion. High society in New York. It really shook up the sport and its image. Same with movies. I created a whole new niche for action mov-ies, and the same in politics.

You know the line from Conan the Barbar-ian, about “What is best in life?”“To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.” [laughs]

Do you, in your heart of hearts, think, Fuck yeah, that’s right?Well, I think that one has to translate it into today’s terms. Because “crush” is something we shouldn’t do anymore. It’s not p.c. The method today is to neutralize your enemies. And no one would want to hear the lamen-tations of women.

You know, the root of neutralize is “to neu-ter,” which means to cut o≠ the testicles. So it’s really the same thing.Really?

I don’t know. Sounds right, though.The great thing I have is a gift that I can see where I’m going and need to be. Like when I sat down and said, “I want to be Mr. Universe.” I saw myself onstage, holding the trophy, hundreds of bodybuilders be-low me. This is the vision I had. The same when I got into movies or ran for governor. And people told me I’d never make it, with the accent. But I had no doubt whatsoever. I just calmly move forward.

michael hainey is gq’s deputy editor.

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meat is juicy but doesn’t drip. The red on-ion is thinly sliced. Like well-to-do people with manners, the burger is perfectly cor-rect. The bar scene is a bit annoying—too many yuppies on cell phones, reminding one another how well they’re doing—but otherwise democracy prevails: no reserva-tions, no credit cards, no playing favorites.

15 | Build Your Own BurgerT H E C O U N T E R S A N TA M O N I C A

I asked the young girl taking orders if she had ever seen a burger duplicated. “Not really,” she replied. “You think it might happen, and then somebody adds avo-cado.” By the owner’s calculations, this spot offers more than 300,000 possibilities. At the minimum, you can ask for a one-third-pound plain burger on a regular bun. At the extreme, you can have, for example, a two-thirds-pound veggie burger topped with herbed-goat-cheese spread, roasted-corn-and-black-bean salsa, hard-boiled egg, and

dried cranberries on a honey-wheat bun. At least you can. I wouldn’t.

16 | Hamburger & FriesB U R G E R J O I N T S A N F R A N C I S C O

No place looks less like a joint. It should be renamed the Obsessive-Compulsive Café. It’s neat. It’s scrubbed. The decor is fake ’50s, with overhead Jetsons-style light fixtures plus red vinyl and stainless steel. The burger is so artistically presented it could be Japanese. (Do the Japanese have burger joints?) Neatly set on a stainless-steel plate is a sheet of waxed paper, and atop that rests a deconstructed burger, with a dollop of mayo on the top half of the grilled sesame-seed bun and a burger made from Niman Ranch beef on the bottom half. Lettuce, tomato, red onion, and pickle sit in one orderly pile, fries in another. The people who run the Burger Joint have gotten everything right, except the name.

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“hamburger.” I know everybody in Chicago is depressed because the Cubs never win. I never realized they were also deaf. I’d be disheartened, too, if I had to eat burgers in Chicago—Poag Mahone’s was the only place I found that did burgers right. Good bakery buns, soft and sweet. Tasty ground sirloin given a nice char on an indoor grill. Even a “Burger Eater’s Bill of Rights.” Poag Mahone’s lived up to most of its promises, although the pickle spear, guaranteed “crisp and cold,” was a tad warm.

19 | Our Famous BurgerS I D E T R AC K B A R A N D G R I L L

Y P S I L A N T I , M I

Here is one of my core culinary credos: The closer you come to a college campus, the worse burgers get. Sidetrack Bar and Grill—named for its location next to an old railroad siding—is an exception. This modern-looking pub, around since 1850, doesn’t seem con-cerned with pleasing undiscerning Eastern Michigan University freshmen. “We don’t get much of a young crowd,” my waitress

said. The meat, a secret blend, tastes like chuck. The sesame-seed bun is small, soft, and grilled. I recommend a visit to the auto-mobile museum across the street, although they won’t let you play drive-in and eat your burger in a vintage car.

20 | Hamburger SandwichLO U I S ’ LU N C H N E W H AV E N , C T

The crew numbers two. A young man takes your order and makes change. An elderly woman in elastic-waist slacks makes the toast, forms the patties, broils the meat, assembles the burgers (with a schmear of something like Cheez Whiz, a tomato slice, and raw onion), slices them in half, sets them on the counter. She’s fast, real fast. In a senior-citizen table-tennis tournament, I’d put my money on her. There are no buns, no fries, no ketchup. Louis’ Lunch claims to have made America’s first hamburger sand-wich, back in 1900. If it’s true, it was as sig-nificant a moment as the discovery of fire.

alan richman is a gq correspondent.

“just can’t help being who they are.” Well, the e≠ects of this sequence—by

which casting directors must get crazier and crazier with their choices, resulting, once the show has aired and had its effect on the country, in a casting demographic in which one must scrape the barrel that much harder to find people who’d even go near a reality show—remained, for many years, gradual and nearly imperceptible. But now…bros, have you watched TV re-cently? From what can be gathered, they’re basically emptying out group homes into these studios. It has all gotten so very real. Nobody’s acting anymore. I mean, sure, they’re acting, but it’s not like they’re ever not acting. That’s what I’m trying to say.

And I just don’t see how you can’t love it. They’re all there, all the old American gro-tesques, the test-tube babies of Whitman and Poe, a great gauntlet of doubtless eyes, big mouths spewing fantastic fountains of impenetrable self-justification, mutter-ing dark prayers, calling on God to strike down those who would fuck with their money, their cash, and always knowing, al-ways preaching. Using weird phrases that nobody uses, except everybody uses them now. Constantly talking about our “goals.” Throwing carbonic acid on our castmates because they used our special cup and then calling our mom to say, in a baby voice, “People don’t get me here.” Walking around in a huggable T-shirt with a kitchen knife behind our backs. Telling it like it is, y’all. (What-what!) And never passive-aggres-sive, no. Saying it straight to your face. But crying, crying, crying. My God, there have

been more tears shed on reality TV than by all the war widows of the world. Are we so raw? It must be so. There are too many of them—too many shows and too many people on the shows. And I just get so ex-hausted with my countrypeople—you know the ones, the ones you run into who are all like, “Oh gosh, reality TV? I’ve never even seen it. Is it really that interesting?” I mean, I’m sorry, but go starve. To me that’s about as noble as being like, “Oh, Nagasaki? I’ve never even heard of that!” This is us, bros. This is our nation. A people of savage senti-mentality, weeping and lifting weights.

* * *the club appearance wasn’t enough. I asked them to dinner—the Miz, Melissa, and Coral—because I had to know for my-self if they were real. If all those years spent being themselves for a living had left them with selves to be, or if they’d maybe begun to phase out of existence, like on a Star Trek episode.

But then I got distracted. You know how it is, when you’re kickin’ it. I got to telling them about some of my all-time fave mo-ments. I talked about the time Randy and Robin were drinking on the upstairs porch—it was the San Diego season. Big Ran was telling Robin about his personal philosophi-cal system, involving a positive acceptance of epistemological uncertainty, a little thing he liked to call “agnostics.” When Robin (I thought very sweetly) complimented Ran on his philosophical side, which she hadn’t noticed up till then, Big Ran goes: “I have a lot of knowledge to share.”

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self-reflexivity, more uniform complicity in the falseness of it all—it made things more real. Because, of course, people being on a reality show is precisely what these people are! Think of it this way: If you come to my o∞ce and film me doing my job (I don’t have one, but that only makes this thought experiment more rigorous), you wouldn’t really see what it was like to watch me do-ing my job, because you’d be there watch-ing me (Heisenberg uncertainty principle, interior auto-mediation, and so forth). But now dig this: What if my job were to be on a reality show, being filmed, having you watching me, interior auto-mediation, and so forth? What if that were my reality, bros? Are your faces melting yet?

This is where we are, as a people. And not just that. No, the other exciting thing that’s happened—really just in the past few years—involves the ramping accelera-tion of a self-reinforcing system that’s been in place since the birth of reality TV. See, because the population from which pro-ducers and casting directors can draw to get bodies onto these shows has come to comprise almost exclusively persons who “get” reality shows and are therefore hip to the fact that one is all but certain to be humiliated and irrevocably compromised on such a show, the producers and casting directors, who’ve always had to be careful to screen out candidates who are overly self-aware and therefore prone to freeze up and act all “dignified” in front of the cam-eras, are forever having to work harder and harder to locate “spontaneous” individuals, people who, as the Miz says approvingly,

17 | Double Bacon Deluxe with CheeseR E D M I L L B U R G E R S S E AT T L E

I got up to leave. My friend, a Seattle resi-dent, yanked me back. I’d just finished eating the basic Red Mill Burger, which is an overdone quarter-pound patty with let-tuce and a light, spicy mayo dressing that turned the meat white. Just in time, she re-membered what she loved: the burger with everything. The American cheese is artfully melted, the thick pepper bacon superb, the soft roll pretty wonderful, the red onion sweet, the lettuce and tomato good enough, and the mayo dressing just right with this pile of ingredients. It’s a first-rate burger, provided you ask for your meat rare. It won’t come rare, but it will be juicy.

18 | HamburgerP OAG M A H O N E ’ S CA RV E RY A N D

A L E H O U S E C H I C A G O

The television, tuned to a Cubs game, was so loud I had to scream my order sev-eral times, and all I was trying to say was

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