The Best Burger At The End Of The World. – by CHRIS GRETA

Marret Hinrichsen makes the world’s best hamburger.

I know. That’s a big claim, and how dare I? I haven’t had every hamburger on this planet. How many places can you buy a burger on Planet Earth?

Well, now that our lives are being overshadowed by AI, I asked how many hamburger restaurants are on Planet Earth,

I asked Das Google and they didn’t know.

Really? Google and all the AI on the planet can’t tell me how many burger joints there are? I can find out the temperature of the inside of the sun or the number of Emperor penguins that are alive right now, but no real guess on burger joints?

But how many burgers are consumed every day? Iffy there too. The Interwebs suggests that around 7 million burgers are eaten every day.

Again, thanks for the accuracy there, people.

So, the number is huge. And I don’t have time left to try them all, but my better judgment tells me that I’ve had some mighty fine burgers on most of the continents and a handful of islands, and this…

This is the best burger.

Let’s break this perfect burgerness down.

I’ll start with the bun.

Until now, any really good sesame seed bun was in the running. LOTS of sesame seeds are a good thing. But up until now, my true favorite was the bun from Hamburger Henry’s. It was an iconic, 24-hour joint in my hometown of Long Beach, California. HH was in Belmont Shore with a lot of bars and restaurants by the beach, and it was open all day and all night until some genius tore it down to build something useless.

That’s the great thing about 24-hour joints. You never have to wonder if they’re open.

They were always open, and it was a great place to get that giant burger and onion rings when they threw you out of the bars at 2:00 AM.

The burgers were big and they had something like a hundred different burgers on the menu. Burgers with strange fixings, caviar, and one came with a t-shirt. They were all good, but the bun had some kind of crispy crusty stuff on top. I have to say, the best way to describe the way the buns looked was to say scabs. Sorry. Unpleasant visual, but it looked like it was covered in dark golden scabs on top.

Regretting the terrible description, but that’s how the buns looked. The reality is that they were delicious, and I spent many late-night hours embracing the beauty of the buns.

The next closest burger is still available at Hof’s Hut in Long Beach. There used to be several of these, but I think we’re down to two. It’s a truly great burger and you can get it with their onion rings. It comes naturally with Thousand Island, so you don’t have to ask for the obvious. It’s a big burger, messy, and a total delight, and until I found THIS burger, it was at the top of the heap. Sorry, Hof’s. You’re Number Two, no matter how hard you try, but if you’re in the Continental US, you’re much easier to find.

But The Best Burger at The End of The World.

Brioche bun.

And I’ve had plenty of brioche buns, but this was special. It has a bit of sweetness to it, and it’s a bit waterproof.

Waterproof bun, you say? Nach.

Well, it put up with the juiciness of the freshly ground, organic beef and the sauce, and didn’t fall apart. It held its structure and function down to the last bite.

It’s soft and gentle, but it stayed there till the end.

I am very careful to cook my corn tortillas for tacos long enough to cook the moisture out so no matter what’s in that taco, the tortilla serves its function to the last bite.

Is there anything worse than an uncooked tortilla disintegrating in two bites?

That’s the whole damned purpose of a tortilla: to turn a bowl of food into something you can hold. If the tortilla doesn’t allow you to hold the food, put it in a bowl and get a fork.

So the bun. Brioche, tiny bit of sweet, soft but sturdy.

And the final secret, which is genuinely a bit of circular magic.

The bun includes the mash from the barley grown here on the farm that makes the whisky.

Take a moment and let that rattle around in your head for a bit.

I think I need a moment. And maybe a cigarette.

Now the patty.

This patty is organically grown beef raised right here on the farm. Yesterday’s mooing neighbor could be today’s burger.

Yeah, it’s a cruel world, but I don’t make the rules. I just report the results.

And this beef patty is cooked perfectly and juicy with a little pink and drips out the back when you take a bite, but because of the well-engineered bun, it is still a sandwich and not a bowl.

So the patty brings flavor and meatiness and beefiness and just enough chewiness and not too much of any of those things.

And of course, organically grown greens. I do love shredded iceberg on a burger. That is a very midwestern US thing from family-owned burger joints. This wasn’t shredded iceberg, but more the kinda fancy-ass greens you get in an expensive salad in an expensive restaurant. Not sure what was in there, but no arugula.

Damn, how I hate arugula.

OK, I’ll explain.

For a time, Loree and I juiced. We had this big industrial juicer and every morning we juiced a lot of vegetables and fruit because it was supposed to keep us alive for a thousand years.

It’s a pain in the ass. And eventually, we realized it was just stupid.

But close to the end of our stopping, I put a bunch of fresh arugula in the juicer and juiced it and took a big, long gulp.

Don’t ever do this.

Arugula mixed with other things is fine, I suppose, but to take a big handful of the weeds and turn it into concentrated weed juice will put you off your chow for a long time.

I haven’t been able to stomach the stuff since.

It’s been decades.

But no arugula on this burger.

Then tomato. Of course, tomato.

And now the second-place kicker here. Some caramelized purple onions.

Now we’re really getting into the outer reaches of burgerness.

And the cheese. It’s some sort of locally made cheese from the island loaded with flavor. A little Swiss. I’m not sure. I don’t need to understand the exact nature, just appreciate how it adds to the overall magic.

And magic is the right word… But I’m only setting you up for the final pinnacle of The Best Burger at The End of The World…

Das Sauce.

It’s kind of a creamy, thick, a little pink, of really just sort of an off white.

It’s pure magic.

I asked what was in it and got a bit of German that I didn’t understand.

I’m a Thousand Island kinda guy and there are hints of Thousand Island here, but better.

I was in a burger joint slash biker bar called The Bent Rim in Leakey, Texas. It’s a little Texas Hill Country town next to The Twisted Sisters, which is a series of three great motorcycle roads that every biker in Texas has ridden at least once.

I ordered a burger and a beer, like every biker is supposed to, and I asked the biker chick behind the bar if she had any Thousand Island for the burger.

She gave me a one-eyed squint, like she was aiming a Thirty Ot Six at me from a hundred yards away and asked…

“Are you from California?”

Except it sounded like “Are yeewe frum Cali-foor-neea?”

I had to admit…

“Why yes, I am,” which are fighting words in Texas.

“Well, everyone from California want’s Thousand Island on their burgers. We ain’t got no Thousand Island. Just ketchup and mustard.”

Am I that transparent? Did I have “California JerkWater” on my forehead.

But apparently that’s a thing. If you grew up in California, you put Thousand Island on your burger. Afterall, McDonalds has a version of Thousand Island on the Big Mac. Really, Thousand Island is mayonnaise, ketchup and chopped up sweet pickles. Pretty stupidly simple. The real difference is the sweet pickles. They add that hint of sweet to the burger that takes it into the realm of ultimate burgerness.

McDonald’s sells bazillions of burgers with their ungodly fake kinda-sorta sweet dressing, so how tough can it be? Can’t a biker bar in the middle of Texas see that it’s a thing?

The next time I went back to California, I asked everyone I knew, and yes, they like Thousand on their burger and never really thought about it. It’s just there, just like the lettuce and meat and tomato and buns.

It’s normal.

Unlessen, of course, y’all ain’t from around here.

The next time I went back to Leakey (pronounced Lakey), I brought my own damned bottle of Thousand Island.

Justice isn’t easy, but it’s worth the effort.

So back to The Best Burger at The End of The World…

The sauce.

It’s light, delicate, has some thickness to it so it clung to everything it touched and combined with the fresh and perfectly cooked beef, the sauteed onions, the bun and baby lettuces and ripe, real tomato, that amazing cheese and created a third flavor unlike anything in burgerdom.

You pick it up.

Take one bite.

Put it down.

Close your eyes and chew slowly.

Absorb all the flavors.

Savor it. Life is ever so short, and you’re eating the best burger ever created, so get all Zen-like and be in the moment.

Close your eyes. Nothing you can see can match what you’re tasting.

Take another bite. Close your eyes. Some things are eternal.

Maybe have a forkful of the coleslaw, even though it’s called something else in German. It’s fabulous. A bit creamy. A bit vinegar tarty. Perfect. And the potato salad is still warm and buttery.

Then back to that burger.

And here, I’ll go WAY off track for a bit.

I read a story when I was in gradeschool that’s stayed with me my whole life.

The story was about some scientist inventing a drink that turned you green. Once you drank the stuff, you turned green and you never had to eat another solid meal again. You just drank water and a little fertilizer once in a while and went outside and stood naked in the sun to get all the sustenance you’d ever need.

Human photosynthesis.

A thousand times, I’ve thought about that little bit of science fiction. In the story, the world was divided between the green people who stood around naked in the sun and the people still eating.

It became a real problem. The eating people were getting pissed off because so much of the economy depended on people eating. And the green people said, Whatever, this is a lot easier and cheaper, and we don’t waste half our life waiting for the pizza to get delivered.

Often, over the years, I’ve come to realize I’d drink the juice and be green and not have to spend the time or money to eat again. Just go lie out in the sun till I’m full and go about my day.

But… Every so often, I eat something that I know I’d miss if I were green.

This burger.

I’d have missed this burger, and that would be something to mourn.

Sorry Turning Green Juice.

Sorry Hamburger Henry and Hof’s Hut. Y’all are scrambling for second and third. But you’re in worthy company.

So now you ask.

Where might I find such The Best Burger at The End of The World.

Hinrichsen’s Farm and Distillery.

It’s on the western edge of Fohr Island in the North Sea off the coast of Germany and Denmark.

Where you ask?

Go look it up. In the big scheme of land masses, it’s a speck seven miles across and maybe half that up and down. The eastern edge of the island is a ferry ride to the mainland and the Big City is Wyk. We’re over on the other edge of the island near a little village of Dunsum.

I’m staying in a bungalow here on the farm for a month to tell the world about the wonders I find here at the distillery and on the island and I never, ever, never thought I’d write twelve pages on a hamburger.

From an island in the North Sea.

What the hell. How did the world’s best burger end up here.

It’s Marret’s fault.

She’s married to Jan Hinrichsen and their three kids are all here and Marret creates all the food in the café and everything I’ve had here is beyond amazing. I watched her make a huge apple pie-slash-cake that melted my brain. I’ve had multiple desserts, chili (I hate to admit, better than mine). Soups, stews, and more desserts.

Honestly, everything I’ve had here has been way better than it needed to be.

The place is full of tourists every day.

Anyplace that’s full of tourists is usually in a great place, hence the tourists, but with lousy food. Take The Oasis in Austin. Great views overlooking the lake, dozens of decks and sunsets to brag about but the food? They use Velveeta on their nachos. Nuff said.

Marret’s café is the biggest exception I’ve ever seen, anywhere on the planet.

Scratch-made, from the desserts to the hot dishes, all made with real ingredients, organically raised pork and beef, and homemade in total. Not “homemade” the way a Marie Callender’s chicken pie is “homemade.” Meaning cranked out in an industrial factory in Fresno, flash frozen, and sent around the universe.

This is the real stuff.

And that burger…

Another moment, please…

Getting here is tough. You have to get yourself to Hamburg (ironic, ain’t it), then take a dozen trains to Dagebull and get on a ferry, then rent an e-bike or take a cab to the west side of the island to Hinrichsen’s and order your burger. Marret will be in the kitchen with her stylish round glasses and infectious smile.

And then you’ll have your burger.

Take the distillery tour first.

Have your whisky samples before you have The Burger. If you do it after The Burger, it won’t matter. Your brain won’t absorb anything. You will have had all the pleasure a human is possible to have in a week, so do the tour first.

It isn’t easy to get to The End of The World but it’s worth it. If you’re a burger aficionado, you have to make the pilgrimage. It’ll be a bit of a holy trek. You can probably write it off your taxes.

Go to there.

Have Marret’s Burger (I may pester her to name it after me because I took a stand to proclaim it The Best Burger At The End Of The World, so maybe by the time you get here to have yours, it’ll be called Greta’s Best Burger At The End Of The World, which, I have to admit, is a great name for a burger.)

Live your life a little better.

Have The Burger.

Amen.

- Chris Greta -
Sep 12, 2025