Anthony Bourdain's One-Hand Rule For Better Burgers

Anthony Bourdain was known for his uncompromising stance on culinary issues. The chef, author, and TV personality didn't hold his tongue when it came to his opinions about food. He once called Kobe beef sliders a "clear and present danger" since they were more about luxury status than taste. Relatedly, for Bourdain, the perfect burger encompassed only three things — a soft potato bun, a well-ground patty of good quality beef, and meltable cheese.

Beyond these basics, Bourdain believed that "as with all things you cook, there are trade-offs. I like lettuce on a burger. Maybe even a tomato is nice, but it makes it structurally more difficult to eat," he said in a 2016 Insider Tech interview. He had a sure-fire test to determine whether a burger made the grade or not. "In a perfect world you should be able to eat a hamburger with one hand and get a representative chunk of all the elements," he said.

Always one to look out for his fans, Anthony Bourdain once warned people of a major restaurant menu red flag to avoid. "If they have a menu that's all over the place, if they have a hamburger or Asian fusion and it's not in Asia, these are all worrisome to me," he told Money in 2018. Likewise, when it came to burgers, he believed less was more.

Ketchup received a thumbs up from Bourdain and mayonnaise ("if you insist"), but not much else, since he believed that once you get beyond these it becomes "an engineering and structural problem as much as it is a flavor experience." By this, he meant that burgers with too many ingredients can end up being unstable. "You know, a burger's a beautiful thing, but not when you're wearing half of it or you're left with two bites of just meat or just bun," he said. Even so, over the years, some of the burgers Bourdain loved came with more than just a dollop of ketchup and often required two hands to navigate from plate to mouth.

Besides Anthony Bourdain's ideal burger (potato bun, single patty, and cheese) another "perfectly acceptable" version, according to him, is the "squashed, flat... twin-gray patty" hamburger found at the West Coast fast food chain In-N-Out Burger, among other places. In fact, Bourdain may have even preferred this style. In a 2015 interview with Eater on YouTube, he said that In-N-Out was always his first stop whenever he was in Los Angeles, was his favorite restaurant in the entire city, and the only fast food chain he "actually" liked.

Bourdain rhapsodized about In-N-Out's hamburgers, which makes sense considering how dedicated the company is to this classic dish. In-N-Out Burger shot down a viral social media rumor that it was introducing a chicken sandwich in 2021, telling media outlets that it was committed to solely serving hamburgers in order to maintain a focus on high-quality ingredients. In the video, he eats his double cheeseburger heaped with toppings. And, although he espoused the one hand rule for better burgers, he actually required both hands to wolf down the In-N-Out meal. For Bourdain, when it comes to burgers, apparently some rules are meant to be broken.