A Guide to Midwestern Burgers
It's all here: Olive burgers, Juicy Lucys, butter burgers, cannibal sandwiches, and more!
Welcome to the weekend!
You probably know by now that we love burgers at American Weekender. And while burgers are enjoyable any time of year, summer is truly burger season, whether you’re grilling them yourself or eating one outside on a road trip. Today’s newsletter features an excerpt about Midwestern burgers from Eaterland: Recipes and Stories from Across the United States, the new cookbook that I contributed to. When I was putting together the Heartland chapter, I knew that burgers were going to play a big part in it since there are just so many regional variations — and sometimes even city or neighborhood variations. This piece ran as an essay in the chapter, and features many favorites, including Michigan olive burgers, the Region smash burgers, and Swensons’ Galley Boy. Be sure to let us know your own favorite regional burger styles in the comments!
If you want more burgers, May’s brand-new Field Guide to Indianapolis includes one of our favorites: the double cheeseburger at the Workingman’s Friend. It has two smashed patties, American cheese, and your choice of toppings, and people pack in for it (pro tip: Go with a friend and get a burger and a breaded pork tenderloin sandwich and share them). We’ve included more than 30 other places to eat and drink in the guide as well — coffee shops, bakeries, taco joints, cocktail bars, breweries, and more. It’s included in a paid subscription, or you can grab it for $15 on our website.
Finally, our Weekend Reading list includes where to drink wine in Michigan, the best restaurants in Miami, and a profile of a bar on our can’t-wait-to-try list.
Thanks for reading!
— Amy Cavanaugh & Kenney Marlatt
Editors, American Weekender
A Guide to Midwestern Burgers
A statement that should surprise no one: Midwestern diners love their burgers. “The Midwest is the birthplace of the beef industry. This made hot dogs and hamburgers, which were previously luxury foods, commoner foods,” explains Paul Fehribach, chef and co-owner at Big Jones in Chicago and the author of Midwestern Food.
Fehribach points out that many independent butchers and grocery stores still grind meat on-site, which allows restaurants to offer freshly ground burgers, made even more special by the addition of regional products.
In other words, Midwest burgers are not a monolith. While Chicago is taken with double smash burgers, like the one Au Cheval popularized in 2012, surrounding states offer burgers unique to them. Take the butter burger. In America’s Dairyland, the burger of choice is topped with gobs of melted butter and onions. Try one at Solly’s Grille in Milwaukee, which has been serving them since 1936, or at one of Culver’s many locations.
Another fast-food favorite: the Galley Boy at Swensons Drive-in, which has outposts around Ohio (and one outside Indianapolis). It’s a double cheeseburger dressed with tartar and barbecue sauces and speared with a pimento-stuffed green olive. Green olives also star in Michigan’s olive burger, which is found primarily around Grand Rapids, like at Mr. Burger. It’s topped with a creamy, tangy condiment of chopped green olives mixed with mayo and olive juice.
Olives are also a popular topping at Miner-Dunn, a more than ninety-year-old burger joint that’s located in Highland, Indiana, which is part of “the Region,” the nickname for the northwestern part of the state. But the real defining burger style here features a patty that’s smashed so thinly the edges are lacy and crispy. You can try it at Miner-Dunn topped with Old English Cheese spread, olives, or other adornments. The best-known purveyor of this style is Schoop’s Hamburgers, which has thirteen locations around the area. The signature Schoop’s Mickey is a patty topped with two slices of American cheese. In Chicago and want to try it? Head to the aptly named the Region, a Roscoe Village restaurant that serves the burgers in single, double, triple, and patty melts.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, there’s the Juicy Lucy, a thick patty stuffed with American cheese. When cooked, the cheese melts, giving the burger a molten core. Matt’s Bar & Grill and the 5-8 Club both claim to have invented the style, but you’ll find them all over the area. The 5-8 also serves a GCB, a cheeseburger on garlic bread—it’s a nod to the one made at Marvin’s in Greencastle, Indiana.
Prefer your burger open-faced? Springfield, Illinois’s horseshoe is a patty set on toast and topped with French fries and cheese sauce. Try one at D’Arcy’s Pint or Charlie Parker’s Diner. Or how about raw? The cannibal sandwich is a Wisconsin holiday treat consisting of raw ground beef with mustard and onions on bread. In Cleveland, Cordelia chef Vinnie Cimino pays homage to the one his grandfather ate by mixing dry-aged beef with Duke’s mayo and Stadium Mustard and topping it with Cheddar frico, which adds some crispiness, and malt pickled onions.
Another genre: burgers made with loose ground beef, which approach Sloppy Joe territory. The Boogaloo Wonderland Sandwich, available at Chef Greg’s Soul N the Wall in Detroit, consists of beef topped with caramelized onions, cheese, and tangy-sweet Boogaloo Sauce. The loose meat sandwich, sometimes called the tavern sandwich, consists of ground beef and sautéed onions and is associated with Iowa, and particularly Maid-Rite locations. In Chicago, TriBecca’s Sandwich Shop makes theirs by mixing beef with yellow mustard and topping it with sweet-and-sour onions, steak sauce aioli, and Muenster.
And then there’s the Big Baby, a burger so hyper-regional that unless you’ve been to Chicago’s Southwest Side, you may not have heard of it. Purveyors like Nicky’s The Real McCoy offer this burger, which is set apart by its specific construction. There’s a single slice of cheese that goes between two patties, while pickles, ketchup, and mustard go on the bottom of the toasted sesame bun and griddled onions go on top. It’s not as unusual as other Midwestern burgers, but, like all of them, it’s a beloved local favorite.
Reprinted from Eaterland: Recipes and Stories from Across the United States, published by Abrams. Text copyright © 2026 Vox Media, Inc. Photographs by Matt Taylor-Gross, Illustrations by Yoko Baum, Cover © 2026 Abrams
More Burger Stories
All Our Favorite Spots in Indianapolis: A New Downloadable Field Guide for Paid Subscribers
All our Indianapolis favorites are available as a three-day Field Guide that you can download on our website. As always, it’s free for paid subscribers — just use the code in this month’s Weekend Getaway newsletter. Here’s what you get:
Three-day recommended dining itinerary
Picks for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and drinks
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Designed for your mobile phone
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Paid subscribers also get access to the American Weekender Google Map. This map includes every place we’ve ever mentioned in our newsletters plus every place we’ve ever recommended in our Field Guides. Whether you’re looking for roadside barbecue in Tennessee, afternoon cocktails in New Orleans, or a farm-to-table dinner in Western Michigan, our map — which has more than 1,200 locations! — will point the way. We update it with new spots each week, so keep it bookmarked for your next trip. Paid subscribers can find the link in this month’s Weekend Getaway newsletter.
MICHIGAN
Wine Country Next Door: Michigan wine has been a thing for awhile now, but the wines just keep getting better and better. Ari Bendersky put together a list of three top ones to try for me at Chicago mag — he recommends Stranger Wine Company in Buchanan, Modales in Fennville, and Left Foot Charley in Traverse City. While we have enjoyed wines from all three, we paid a visit to Modales last summer and had a great time (the Blaufränkisch was our fave). If you’re heading to Michigan this summer, be sure to put at least one on your list. (Chicago)
FLORIDA
The 21 Best Restaurants in Miami: Miami is a place we are long overdue to return to, and this list of the top restaurants in town by The Leftovers Miami gives us 21 new reasons why. Their restaurant picks offer quite a range, and they highlight spots serving an Indian tasting menu, superlative brisket, and a kouign-amann ice cream sandwich. (The Leftovers Miami)
NEW YORK
An Echo of Chicago Tiki in Brooklyn: We were regulars at Lost Lake, a Chicago tropical bar that closed in 2022, and spent many happy times there. We went for our birthdays, we took visiting friends for daiquiris, and we were always the first to arrive for pop-ups, like the epic week the Anvil team came up from Houston and threw a Texas Tiki Disco. (This one-week pop-up is my favorite bar of all time.) Now, Lost Lake co-owner Paul McGee is back with a new bar, and this time it’s in Brooklyn. Robert Simonson heads in for a tour and shares an enticing report on all the offerings. Echo Lake, which McGee owns with Chloe Frechette, features daily daiquiris, classic and modern tropical drinks, and a food menu of dishes like green coconut curry chowder. As a sherry lover, I’ll certainly be getting the Bamboo Colada, and then nipping down to Undercurrent, a fancier bar underneath, for an Old Pal. (The Mix with Robert Simonson)
— Compiled by Amy Cavanaugh
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Love the Solly’s shout-out. Skippy’s Burger Bar in Thiensville and Crave on Oakland Ave in Shorewood also excellent purveyors in Milwaukee!
Thanks for the shout out! Nice array of burgers.