First We Feast

First We Feast is the food channel best known for Hot Ones, and for burger lovers it is something close to a video archive of American hamburger culture. Two series did most of the work. The Burger Show, hosted by chef Alvin Cailan of Eggslut from 2018 to 2020, paired him with celebrities and cooks to taste expensive burgers, secret menu items and city favourites, and to cook burgers from Bob’s Burgers and SpongeBob.

Burger Scholar Sessions, running since 2020, is the channel’s real encyclopedia. Its host George Motz, the author and filmmaker behind Hamburger America, cooks one regional style after another in his kitchen and tells the history behind it: the Tennessee deep-fried burger, the Mississippi slugburger, the Connecticut steamed cheeseburger, the Brooklyn double-dipped roast beef burger, the Cuban frita, the North Carolina slaw burger, the Hawaiian loco moco, Louis’ Lunch’s 121-year-old original and speed rounds of regional toppings from olive to peanut butter. International episodes cover Malaysia’s Ramly burger, the Turkish wet burger, the Danish gravy burger, Canada’s Winnipeg Fatboy and Australia’s burger with the lot.

The later Burger Bucket List series and a long run of shorts carry the same material to a new audience, from the White Castle slider to the Oklahoma fried onion burger.