Though it may seem counterintuitive, a smash burger is worth trying here, even if only for the sake of cultural comparison. Mexico City is unrivaled when it comes to seeking culinary innovation among various cuisines — including Chinese food, Indian food, pizza and burgers — and reshaping it for a massively new audience, re-creating something at once familiar and entirely new. Yes, you can walk into any trend-forward burger spot and order the most basic smashes (a single or double patty with a house specialty sauce, usually a barely divergent iteration of In-N-Out’s famous spread). But in la Ciudad de México, you can also find heaps of jalapeños, salsa macha and other unique twists that make the hamburguesa multiverse in this country so unique and worthwhile.
The smash burgers here are for the purists at heart: a straightforward combo of quarter-pound chuck served in up to six patties that are individually smashed and accompanied with the standard fixings. For anyone who is extra carnivorous, optional slices of bacon can be added to go along with an order of garlic parmesan fries and local craft beer from a relatively extensive brew selection. But the magic is in its all-American simplicity, despite the location — across Avenida Insurgentes, the national monument for the Mexican revolution sits.
How did Mexico City get here? The mainstream American burger zeitgeist here first began to surge in 2019, when Shake Shack debuted along a heavily trafficked avenue in Colonia Juarez, one of Mexico City’s most centralized neighborhoods. But when the pandemic hit, burgers — along with everything else — went on pause. During that precarious time, “dark kitchens” (a Mexican phrase used for what most Americans might know as “ghost kitchens”) became popular, and low-cost, easily packable options ascended.
At one point, a smash burger taco emerged.
“It all started during the pandemic in 2020,” says Marcelo Lara, a rock musician who travels all over Latin America and in his spare time has an alter ego as the food blogger BurgerMan.
BurgerMan began his hunt around 2004 while touring his home country as the lead guitarist for Moderatto. He documented his earliest meat-and-bun discoveries online, and at one point, he began to write about his national burger quest as a columnist for outlets like Playboy and Chilango. In 2016, BurgerMan created his Instagram and took cooking classes focused on making the perfect hamburger. Though he takes his personal burger crusade all over Mexico, he has his very own TuriBus burger tour available in Mexico City, with two current stops dedicated to smash burgers.
“One or two years after [Mr. Blanco’s], they were everywhere,” says BurgerMan. Currently, he estimates there are about 30 smash burger joints in operation in Mexico City alone.“It was a style that took a long time to get popular in Mexico because there are multiple paradigms we have to break to appreciate different kinds of burgers here,” BurgerMan says. “For a long time, everyone thought good burgers were only grilled. And everyone was used to regular fast food big chains; McDonalds, Burger King, Carl’s Jr., things like that.”
Around 2015, BurgerMan started to see an overall move toward more craft burger styles, which has opened up locals’ willingness to experiment with flavors and techniques. “As it got away from old school traditions, you could start to find more burgers at street stands on the corner, away from fast food chains,” he says. “It started having subdivisions and subgenres.”
He compares burgers in Mexico to the omnipotent taco: a flavorful vessel with an infinitude of customizable choices. What kind of taco are you looking for? Trompo de pastor? Canasta? Northern-style flour tortillas? Arabe? Guisado? Fried? Accompanied with birria?
“Most people outside of Mexico don’t always understand that there are variations of the taco medium; there’s not just one kind,” he says. Once burgers in Mexico City reached a similar level of popularity and ubiquity, new tweaks and styles simply “became inevitable,” he adds.
A burger and fries at Smashy’s in Mexico City.
Smashy’s
Today, tourists and locals can satisfy their smash burger addiction in any neighborhood. Near Glorieta de los Insurgentes, an Americana-inspired parlor with checkered tile floors and over-the-counter milkshakes (cookies and cream is a hit), garnered attention for its short rib smash burger on potato buns — known as “La California Soul” — and jalapeño-laced smashies. Deeper into town, in Nápoles, one spot promotes smash burgers with cacao nibs and the added heat of thick, slow-dripping salsa macha.
And yet, for every glaring difference one might encounter in Mexico, there’s often a taste of Uncle Sam to be had, or at least an attempt at one. Nothing represents that deep-rooted, tangled connection between the two nations more than a good old smash burger, with its formerly niche appeal having grown into a mainstream success among CDMX’s savviest foodmakers.
