Burger Bucket List pays a visit to Sid’s Diner in El Reno to dine on fried onion burgers

Burger expert George Motz and chef Alvin Cailan recently paid a visit to Sid’s Diner along Route 66 in El Reno, Oklahoma, to sample a regional dish — the fried onion burger.

The quest was part of the Burger Bucket List by the First We Feast channel on YouTube.

The video also features the Meers Store and Restaurant in Meers, Oklahoma, and Johnnie’s Charcoal Broiler in Oklahoma City.

But I’ve embedded the video so it starts at the Sid’s segment (at 12:13 if the embed doesn’t work). Motz is very enthusiastic about the fried onion burger there.

Honestly, though, there are two other fried onion burger places in El Reno that are equally as good — Robert’s Grill and Johnnie’s Hamburgers and Coneys. All three are right along the Route 66 corridor.

Thrillist some years ago published a history of the fried onion burger in El Reno. The sandwich is rooted in Ross Davis, who ran a restaurant called the Hamburger Inn in El Reno along Route 66 in 1926.

Because this was the Depression, hamburger meat was expensive, but onions were cheap. Davis started “smashing them into the meat with the back of his spatula. He called them Depression burgers and he’d smash a half-onion’s worth of shreds into a five-cent burger.” Apparently Davis’s spot was in a prime position — at the intersection of Route 66 and Highway 81 — and word of his creation spread quickly. Several other eating establishments in El Reno followed suit, and began making their own versions of the fried onion burger. A burger star was born.

The Hamburger Inn is long gone, but three fried onion burger joints are alive and thriving in El Reno.

(Hat tip to The Food Dood Feed; image of fried onion burgers at Sid’s Diner in El Reno, Oklahoma, via Facebook)