If you go to the website of Louis Lunch, there is a link to an entry at the Library of Congress that attributes the invention of the hamburger to this little shack in New Haven, Connecticut. That, in my book, makes this an historic place to dine. And that is what I did. The small place is unassuming in diminutive stature, while being quaint and eye-catching at the same time. As you enter this little historic burger joint, located across the street from some hopping clubs in New Haven, you can not help but be struck by the feeling that something is very different. In fact, it is very, very, different. The menu consists of burgers. You can get them with cheese, onion, and tomato….and that is it! They will come on toasted white bread and you will be mocked and ridiculed if you ask for ketchup or mustard. The burgers are cooked in contraptions that resemble
vertical gas-fired toasters. The burger is hand formed from a pile of meat and placed in a wire-grill basket and inserted vertically into the contraption. If you want onion, it is placed on top of the meat patty. This allows the onion to cook at the same time, being basted in the fat that drips down from the patty. You can get chips with your burger, or potato salad, and a good selection of sodas including Foxon Park Sodas such as birch beer, root beer, and cream soda. Foxon Park soda has been made in East Haven Connecticut for more than eighty years. Birch beer, for those who are not familiar with it, is kind of like root beer with a lighter flavor and a bit of menthol. I used to drink the hell out of some birch beer growing up in Connecticut. I even used to shave the bark off of a birch tree just to smell it; it smelled good enough to eat or to make my own birch beer.
If you are wondering why the burgers are served on white bread, it is because they have been serving them that way since before the hamburger bun was invented. That’s right; Louis Lunch has been serving burgers this way since 1895, making Foxon Park look like johnny-come-lately company. It gets high marks in the Road Food Guide, the biblical tome leading foodies and hungry travelers to good food across America for decades.
The burgers were remarkably moist and flavorful. The onion had a great grilled flavor and the tomato added enough moisture and sweetness that no one will ever miss ketchup. America is short on things that go for more than a century, let alone things that are credited with culinary creations that have conquered the globe. You can experience both of them with a quick stop in a small shack of a burger joint in New Haven.
www.louislunch.com
263 Crown St
New Haven, CT 06511, United States
1 203-562-5507
If you go to the website of Louis Lunch, there is a link to an entry at the Library of Congress that attributes the invention of the hamburger to this little shack in 
vertical gas-fired toasters. The burger is hand formed from a pile of meat and placed in a wire-grill basket and inserted vertically into the contraption. If you want onion, it is placed on top of the meat patty. This allows the onion to cook at the same time, being basted in the fat that drips down from the patty. You can get chips with your burger, or potato salad, and a good selection of sodas including Foxon Park Sodas such as birch beer, root beer, and cream soda. 
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