What is a Steakburger?

There are plenty of burgers out there that could claim the name of steakburger. Every steakhouse in Chicago’s ritzy River North neighborhood offers a burger, many of them made from fancy grass-fed or dry-aged cuts of beef, but very few of them put the word “Steakburger” on their menu. (Though some of them do offer steakburgers, or “steak burgers,” or a burger with the word “steak” conspicuously included in the description.) While the word “steakburger” might denote a higher quality of beef than what’s found in the typical “hamburger,” the connotations of the word may be quite different.

As far as I can tell, the word “Steakburger” gained prominence as a result of the rise of the Steak ‘n Shake chain of restaurants. Steak ‘n Shake was founded in the early 1930s in Normal, IL, by Gus and Edith Belt. In the early days, Gus was said to roll a barrel of steaks–T-bone, sirloin, and round–into the dining area and grind it in full view of his customers, so they’d know that his “steakburgers” were made from actual steak.

I’ve been to many a Steak ‘n Shake in my day–in my youth, it was the spot to stop during a late night road trip and get a Vanilla Coke for the road–but I’ve never seen a meat grinder publicly displayed in the dining room. I did, however, have what was likely my most horrifying restaurant experience at a Steak ‘n Shake in the mid 1990s, when one finally opened in my hometown of Quincy, IL. Some friends of mine and I stopped by for the grand opening, and the place was a chaos of locals, a literal madhouse. We waited for a table to open up, sat down, and ordered our burgers. With the first bite of my burger, the texture was off–I thought I’d gotten a particularly chewy bit of lettuce or something. With the second bite, I knew something was wrong. I opened up the burger and found that the harried cook had neglected to remove the wax paper from the cheese before adding it to the sandwich.

I haven’t been to Steak ‘n Shake too many times since then, but for the sake of learning about steakburgers, I stopped by the nearest one to my house, on Harlem Avenue in Tinley Park, IL. (I will likely never return to the one in Quincy. 25 years has not dulled the horror)

Steak ‘n Shake

Steak ‘n Shake is all bright whites and reds, chrome and polish. It’s also a fast-food-quality joint in drag as a table-service restaurant. The saving grace ought to be the burgers, which are purported to be the type of smashed/griddled crispy-edged burgers that I particularly like. I’ll say this–they were better than I remembered.

“Better than I remembered” is not meant to be damning with faint praise, since the last Steak ‘n Shake burger I remember eating came garnished with wax paper, but it’s not meant to be a rave review either. This was an edible burger, with some decent browning from the griddle.

It wasn’t great though, just a fairly run-of-the-mill fast food burger. And if you’re a French fry person–Steak ‘n Shake’s fries are shoestring-style, very thin, crisp, and decently seasoned. They are in fact so thin that they do not retain heat very well, and are well on their way to becoming cold by the time they hit your table. I’m not opposed to the idea of eating at Steak ‘n Shake again, necessarily, but I can’t say I envision a set of circumstances that would bring that about.

Freddy’s

Lately, the Kansas-based chain of Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers has been making inroads into the Chicago area, and Mindy and I have been known to stop by the Orland Park location when we’re out shopping, or dropping off our kids’ outgrown clothes at the Goodwill next door. They do the crisp lacy-edged burgers that I like quite well.

Similar to the “original” from Steak ‘n Shake, the “classic” from Freddy’s is a double burger, though fully dressed it comes only with ketchup, onion, pickle, and mustard. You can request grilled onions instead of raw, which I often do. I’m not certain why on this particular occasion they thought I meant half-grilled onions, half-raw.

The fries are also similar to the Steak ‘n Shake shoestring fries, though slightly better browned and seasoned. Freddy’s also not only has “Fry sauce,” a Utahn name for a mayo-ketchup combination that works great for fries, but they also have Jalapeno fry sauce, a spicier version of the same. The jalapeno fry sauce is a new obsession of mine–sadly, the take-home version they sell in a squeeze bottle is a little sweeter than what they serve in the store. Still, when the fries are extra skinny like this, condimentation helps.

While there, I asked the manager what the reasoning behind the word “Steakburger” was when describing their burgers. I was hoping for some kooky origin story like the big meat grinder from Steak ‘n Shake, or perhaps a description of which cuts of beef went into the grind.

Instead, he replied, “It means at least 80% beef.”

I paused. I considered. I tried to prompt him for a little more detail. “Do you mean vs. fat content? Is there a specific cut they use?”

“80% is a lot,” he said. From nearby, the ghostly apparition of Freddy, the namesake of the restaurant chain, pointed at me and laughed.

Flo & Santos

Flo & Santos is a “Pizza & Pierogis” spot open in Chicago’s South Loop neighborhood for a few years now. I’d seen it mentioned in the recent Bon Appetit piece about Chicago-style thin-crust pizza recently, and when I saw they had an “Angus steakburger” on their menu, I had to drag Mindy there for a lunch date. We sat in their beer garden on a sunny but not oppressively hot July day, drank unsweetened iced tea, and took an hour or so away from our places of employment to be momentarily human. Also to eat a giant stack of onion rings.

Flo & Santos’ pizza is that square-cut crisp-crusted pizza that is sold in taverns all around Chicago, but a particularly good one, with some unique topping combination. Take Mindy’s choice for the day, the “Flo’s Polish” pizza, combining sliced kielbasa with sauerkraut and crumbled bacon. We both thought it was spectacular, the smoky richness of both kielbasa and bacon cut perfectly by the acidity of the kraut, and somehow it’s all happening on a crisp flatbread, glued together by a layer of cheese and a schmear of tomato sauce.

The burger was what I’d come to try, though. While I’d love to give you a report on how Flo & Santos’ fries compare to those at Steak ‘n Shake and Freddy’s, after that massive pile of onion rings and the pizza I decided to order the burger with a salad instead.

The salad was very lightly dressed, to the point where I wasn’t sure if they’d meant to bring me out a dish of dressing on the side. And yet there was something glistening on those leaves, and it was pleasant enough, especially when I got a bit of pepperoncini in the bite. The burger was thick, your standard pub-style burger, nicely browned and pink in the middle the way you’d want it. I honestly could not finish it, not due to any fault with the burger but rather because I’d filled myself up on onion rings and pizza.

The quality was excellent. I have no idea why it’s a “steakburger” and I didn’t think to ask. There don’t appear to be any guidelines to the use of the word, or any particular aesthetic it evokes. Burgers are made from beef, and so are steaks. You can make a steak from almost any cut of beef, and the same goes for burgers. Some steakburgers are 1930s-style thin smashed patties, some are thick flattened orbs of high-quality beef. Some are served in high-end steakhouses, and some are served at the drive-thru. While it may be interesting to speculate what the distinguishing characteristics of a steakburger may be, it seems to ultimately be a meaningless distraction from a more significant pursuit: Eat burgers. Be happy.