To commemorate National Hamburger Day last year, I wrote this tribute that I am pretty happy with. In fact, I don’t think there is anything else I could pen that would surpass it. So I am not going to try.

I am a big burger fan! After last year’s ode, however, I am not going to try and top it.

What I am going to do, however, is take a few short paragraphs to tell you about the best burger I ate since the 2024 National Hamburger Day and today…

The best burger I ate over the past 365 days was cooked in a small, no-frills café in downtown Coeur d’Alene. Called Hudson’s Hamburgers, you walk into the joint and there is literally a giant mound of ground beef out in the open on the employee side of the bar. You place your order, the cook grabs meat from the mound, throws it on the grill, and cooks your burger.

You can see the hamburger meat to the left. When I was there, the meat was much more plentiful and packed in a high tower but I didn’t have the presence of mind to take a photo of it (photo courtesy of Adam Peter Shinn).

I had never seen such an operation. I had also never tasted a burger quite like the one I had at Hudson’s. It was juicy, tasty, and savory. But its real distinguishing characteristic? The FRESHNESS! How do I explain? Well, as a blogger who finds it a challenge to truly define what freshness tastes like, eating that burger conveyed to me immediately what freshness is…words not needed.

I took this photo of one of the burgers we were served at Hudson’s Hamburgers. It was delicious and FRESH.

But it gets better. In a world of $20 burgers, a Hudson’s hamburger won’t even cost you $4. What kind of parallel universe are we living in?!

Our lunch at Hudson’s Hamburgers occurred in July. We had brought my in-laws to Coeur d’Alene for an afternoon of boating. I was a little nervous to bring them inside Hudson’s for a quick bite before we hit the water. But you know what? It was probably the favorite meal they ate the entire 11-day trip. Go figure.

Happy National Hamburger Day. Don’t Blink.