Patty Melt

The Patty Melt is widely credited to Tiny Naylor, a California-based restaurateur who put it on the menu of his Tiny Naylor's drive-in chain in Los Angeles in the late 1940s. Naylor reportedly saw the sandwich as a hybrid between a hamburger and a grilled cheese, a way to give classic burger fans something new without straying too far from familiar ingredients. The combination, thin beef patty, melted Swiss, caramelized onions, rye bread, caught on quickly across the American diner and coffee shop circuit during the 1950s. Within a decade, the Patty Melt was a default menu item at chains like Bob's Big Boy, Denny's, and Norm's, particularly across California, Arizona, and Texas. Its construction is humble but exacting: the bread must be properly griddled in butter, the cheese fully melted into the patty, the onions slow-cooked until deeply sweet. A Patty Melt that gets any of those wrong tastes immediately wrong.

The Patty Melt is a workhorse of American diner culture, the sandwich you order at 11 p.m. at a 24-hour coffee shop after a long shift or a long night out. It has none of the glamour of a steakhouse burger or the regional pride of an In-N-Out Double-Double, but it has a quiet, deeply satisfying loyalty among diner regulars. Food writers periodically rediscover it, and chefs at higher-end restaurants put their own versions on menus, swapping in Gruyère or short-rib patties. But the real Patty Melt lives at Norm's in Los Angeles, at random truck stops in West Texas, and at any open-late diner with a flat-top griddle. It's almost always served with fries or hash browns and a pickle spear.