Hamburger

The smallest thing on the menu and the closest you can get to where it all started. One thin patty, pickles, onions, ketchup and mustard, no cheese. It is easy to dismiss and oddly good: without cheese the pickle and mustard come through clearly. Kids love it, and so do adults who want a snack rather than a meal.

When the McDonald brothers reopened their San Bernardino restaurant in late 1948, they had cut a sprawling barbecue menu down to a handful of items and built a kitchen where every burger was made the same way, fast. The plain hamburger, priced at fifteen cents, was the heart of that system. Almost everything the company became grew out of it.