Bun Voyage: Philly Gourmet Pure 100% Beef Patties (Ep 79)
The story: Philly Gourmet is a Quaker Maid Meats brand, founded in Reading, PA in 1960 by Stanley Szortyka. It’s still family-owned today by his kids, Sergei and Nancy.
Plus: Oysters topped with a frozen margarita in London. Extra large escargot in Paris. Famous frozen custard in Cape May, New Jersey. Car phones. The Doomsday Freezer. A hot take on tater tots. And an air fryer apology.
In the closing segment: Darren tests Max on America's top-ten burger toppings, and one answer turns out to be shockingly hard to guess.
WATCH THIS EPISODE
FROST BITES
The OG Smash. Hamburgers have at least three competing origin stories, depending on who you ask and how long ago they're lying about. Some food historians trace the concept back to Ancient Rome’s Isicia Omentata, a spiced minced-meat patty that was essentially the empire's original smash burger. Others point to 19th-century German immigrants who brought the "Hamburg steak" to American shores. Then there’s the hometown claim: New Haven’s Louis’ Lunch, opened in 1895 by Danish immigrant Louis Lassen. Legend has it he served the first modern hamburger in 1900 when a rushed customer demanded something fast and portable. The Library of Congress officially recognized Louis' Lunch as the birthplace of the burger in 2000, effectively ending the argument by executive order.The Freezer of Doom. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was dreamed up in the 1980s as an insurance policy against global catastrophe. Built deep inside a sandstone mountain about 800 miles from the North Pole, the facility was designed to survive nuclear war, asteroid strikes, and even total power failure (the surrounding permafrost keeps the vault naturally frozen). Funded by Norway and opened in 2008, this subterranean fortress acts as the ultimate cloud storage drive for crop diversity. It operates like a safety deposit box: Norway owns the mountain, but individual countries own their seeds. So if society collapses, the survivors won't have to suffer through bad produce—they’ll just have to get to Svalbard.
Custard's First Stand. Kohr’s Bros. Frozen Custard traces its roots to 1919, when brothers Archie, Elton, and Lester Kohr dragged a homemade ice cream machine to the Coney Island boardwalk and sold 18,000 cones in a single weekend. There was just one massive design flaw—ocean air was melting their treat faster than customers could eat it. So, they added eggs to the recipe, it slowed the melt, and they accidentally created "Frozen Custard." More than a century later, Kohr Bros. remains a Mid-Atlantic boardwalk icon, but in a twist of irony, they no longer operate a single location in New York, where the whole salty catastrophe started.
Well Done, America. The YouGov burger survey behind this week’s closing game contained a few horrifying statistics that didn't make the final edit. First, a tragic 2% of self-identified burger lovers claim they skip toppings entirely (blink twice if you need help). Second, a companion survey revealed that well-done is shockingly the most popular doneness level in America, followed by medium-well and medium. Women are significantly more likely to demand a charred hockey puck than men (47% vs. 33%). At least 61% of Americans correctly agree that a burger is mandatory on their ideal barbecue plate. So there's still hope for the republic.
YOUR COLD CUTS
We want to hear: how do you top your burger? Well done or with some pink? And are you team tater tots or fries?If society collapses, what would you want from the Doomsday Freezer? And more importantly, how are you getting to Svalbard?
Hit us up on the Let's Chill page and let us know!
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