Hamburger Trivia
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110 free Hamburger trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
57 free hamburger trivia questions with answers. Nobody agrees who invented the hamburger. A Wisconsin teenager, two brothers at a New York fair, a Texas lunch-counter cook, a Danish immigrant in New Haven and an Oklahoma farmer all have a claim, and this quiz walks through every one of them before moving on to the sandwiches that conquered the world. Expect the origins of the word, the first fast-food chain and its five-holed sliders, how the Big Mac and Whopper got their names, the cheeseburger's Pasadena birth, Wimpy and Popeye, Guinness records for size and price, plant-based patties that bleed, and regional oddities from Australian beetroot to Japanese rice buns and Hawaii's loco moco. It suits pub quizzes, food nerds and anyone who has argued about the best burger in town. About a third of the questions are easy, and a handful are genuinely hard. Every answer was checked against a reference page, mostly Wikipedia and Guinness World Records, and the source sentence appears under each question.
30 of 110 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which masked McDonaldland character spent decades in black-and-white stripes trying to steal Ronald McDonald's food?
The Hamburglar
The Hamburglar returned in 2015, when McDonald's brought the character back to help launch a new sirloin burger.
Q 02"Hamburger Charlie" Nagreen claimed to have sold the first hamburger at an 1885 county fair in which state?
Wisconsin
Wisconsin's Seymour fair is where the 15-year-old is said to have squashed a meatball between bread so customers could eat while they walked. He came back to sell burgers there every year until his death in 1951.
Q 03Louis' Lunch, which says it served the first hamburger in 1900, is in which city?
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven, Connecticut, is where a rushed customer in 1900 supposedly got steak trimmings between two slices of toast. Louis' Lunch still serves its burgers on toast, cooked in cast-iron grills dating from 1898.
Q 04At Louis' Lunch, which claims to have invented the hamburger, asking for which of these is famously forbidden?
Ketchup
Ketchup is out, like every other condiment, because the owners want customers to taste the meat. The founder's family, now in its fourth generation, allows only cheese, tomato and onion as garnish.
Q 05At which event was the hamburger called "the innovation of a food vendor on the pike"?
1904 St. Louis World's Fair
1904 St. Louis World's Fair: a New York Tribune reporter filed the line, and 'the pike' was the fair's midway. The reporter never named the vendor, so nobody can say for sure whose burger it was.
Q 06Which state's legislature named Athens, claimant Fletcher Davis's town, the 'Original Home of the Hamburger'?
Texas
Texas lawmakers passed the resolution in 2007, backing the tale that Davis, a potter turned cook, was frying burgers at a lunch counter on the courthouse square in the late 1800s.
Q 07The Menches brothers said they invented the hamburger in 1885 after running out of which ingredient?
Pork sausage
Pork sausage ran short at an 1885 county fair, the brothers said, so they fried ground beef instead and, finding it bland, mixed in coffee and brown sugar.
Q 08Which city did Oklahoma's governor proclaim 'The Real Birthplace of the Hamburger' in 1995?
Tulsa
Tulsa got the title on the Bilby family's story that Oscar Bilby served grilled patties on homemade yeast buns on July 4, 1891, which they call the first hamburger on a bun.
Q 09White Castle, credited as the first fast-food hamburger chain, opened in 1921 in which city?
Wichita, Kansas
Wichita, Kansas, lost its last White Castle in 1938 after the company moved its base east; the chain came home for a single day in 2011 to sell burgers for its 90th birthday.
Q 10White Castle patties cook without being flipped because what passes through the five holes punched in each one?
Steam
Steam from the pile of onions under the patties does the cooking; Cincinnati grill man Earl Howell dropped the idea in a suggestion box, and the company liked it enough to patent it.
Q 11White Castle's tiny square burgers are commonly known by what name?
Sliders
Sliders, the chain says, got the name for being so easy to eat; it sold the five-cent burgers by the sack, and the word later spread to almost any mini burger.
Q 12White Castle co-founder Walt Anderson is credited with which fast-food invention?
The hamburger bun
The hamburger bun is credited to Anderson, who around 1916 shaped a heavier dough into small squares to fit his patties; he also ran his kitchen like an assembly line, the template for fast food since.
Q 13Franchisee Jim Delligatti created the Big Mac in 1967 and first sold it in Uniontown, in which US state?
Pennsylvania
Q 21Dave Thomas named the Wendy's burger chain after which member of his family?
His daughter
His daughter Melinda, nicknamed Wendy, posed in pigtails for the sign; years later Thomas apologised to her, saying he should have named the chain after himself because of the pressure it put on her.
Q 22Fry cook Lionel Sternberger reputedly invented the cheeseburger in 1924 in which California city?
Pasadena
A 1928 menu from O'Dell's in Los Angeles listed a cheeseburger smothered in chili for 25 cents.
Q 23Two rival bars in which city claim the Jucy Lucy, a burger with molten cheese sealed inside the patty?
Minneapolis
Minneapolis rivals Matt's Bar and the 5-8 Club sit on the same avenue; Matt's says it forgot the 'i' in Juicy back in 1954, and now warns that a correctly spelled one may be a shameless rip-off.
Pennsylvania was the test market: head office feared a pricier burger would put customers off, so Delligatti trialled it in Uniontown, near Pittsburgh. His reward, he said, was a plaque.
Q 14McDonald's credits which head-office employee with the name Big Mac?
An advertising secretary
An advertising secretary, 21-year-old Esther Glickstein, offered it when an executive rushing to a board meeting asked for ideas; everyone laughed, she said, but it beat Blue Ribbon Burger, and McDonald's only thanked her in 1985.
Q 15In McDonald's 1970s Big Mac jingle, which ingredient is sung straight after 'lettuce, cheese'?
Pickles
Pickles come next, then onions on a sesame-seed bun; the 1974 ads showed real customers fumbling the words, and a 2008 revival in Malaysia gave a free Big Mac to customers who said it within four seconds.
Q 16Which publication launched the Big Mac Index as a lighthearted currency test?
The Economist
The Economist's Pam Woodall devised it to make exchange-rate theory easier to swallow: a burger should cost the same everywhere, so a cheap one hints at an undervalued currency. It gave the world the word 'burgernomics'.
Q 17Burger King's 2009 Facebook app swapped a free Whopper for what?
Ten friends
Ten friends had to be deleted, and the app told each one they had been traded for a burger; nearly 234,000 friendships ended before Facebook objected to those notices and Burger King pulled the stunt.
Q 18Where was the Whopper Jr. accidentally created in 1963 for lack of Whopper bun moulds?
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico's first Burger King opened in Carolina before its Whopper bun moulds had arrived, so manager Luis Arenas-Perez used regular buns; the chain liked the small version enough to sell it worldwide.
Q 19For an April Fools' Day prank in 1998, Burger King advertised a Whopper designed for which customers?
Left-handers
Left-handers were promised a Whopper with every condiment rotated 180 degrees in a full-page USA Today ad; the next day thousands asked for one, and others insisted on the right-handed original.
Q 20Which 1984 presidential hopeful used Wendy's "Where's the beef?" line in a debate against Gary Hart?
Walter Mondale
Walter Mondale told Hart his 'new ideas' reminded him of the ad, and won the nomination; the ad's director later joked that had Mondale said the line like Clara Peller, he would have been President.
Q 24Burger-mooching J. Wellington Wimpy is a character in which comic strip?
Popeye
Popeye's pal forever promises to pay on Tuesday for a burger today, and in 1934 a real American burger chain borrowed his name.
Q 25Britain's Wimpy Bar chain opened its first outlet in 1954 inside a Lyons Corner House in which city?
London
London's Coventry Street got it as a burger counter inside a traditional restaurant; the American original, founded in 1934, had shrunk to seven outlets by its founder's death in 1977, and the UK offshoot outlasted it.
Q 26In Pulp Fiction, Vincent Vega says Paris calls which McDonald's menu item a 'Royale with Cheese'?
Quarter Pounder
Quarter Pounder means nothing in a metric country, Vincent explains, so Paris gets a 'Royale with Cheese'; the real French menu comes close, listing the burger as Le Royal Cheese.
Q 27Six cooks built Guinness's heaviest hamburger, a 2017 giant weighing more than a tonne, in which country?
Germany
Germany's record-setter, built in the Bavarian village of Pilsting, weighed 1,164 kg and took a crane to move; it only counted once every bite was eaten, so it was sold off as nearly 3,000 ordinary burgers.
Q 28Which singer's 'Cheeseburger in Paradise' grew from a craving after canned food at sea?
Jimmy Buffett
Jimmy Buffett limped into a Tortola marina with a broken bowsprit after days on canned food and peanut butter, and found a bar selling American cheeseburgers; the overdone one he got, he said, tasted like manna.
Q 29An In-N-Out burger ordered "Animal Style" is cooked in a thin layer of which condiment?
Mustard
Mustard is cooked into the patty on the grill; the off-menu order, which the chain says began with customer requests, also adds extra spread and grilled onions.
Q 30In-N-Out's crossed palm trees nod to which treasure-hunt comedy, a favourite of founder Harry Snyder?
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World sends its cast racing for loot buried under palms that form a giant letter; Snyder saw each restaurant as his treasure, so since 1972 most have been marked with a crossed pair.