This was the year of the limited edition burger
Never has there been such an avalanche of simple, carefully made burgers served by fine dining establishments in curiously tiny quantities, rather than the luxuries being piled high in today’s burger.
The fancy, gourmet burger is a familiar trope that has been being reinvented for years. Burgers lure you in, they comfort you when you need something familiar, splashed with a little sparkle of indulgence, whether that’s foie gras, a rainfall of truffles, or an extra special patty made of wagyu or dry-aged beef.
But never has there been such an avalanche of simple, carefully-made burgers served by fine dining establishments in curiously tiny quantities. In terms of construction, they’re more aligned with being a recession indicator food, even if their prices are not recession-friendly. This is no longer the era of PYT’s crazy burgers of yesteryear. And sometimes, they are served in spite of a chef’s chagrin.
Meetinghouse’s simple, straightforward burger with its little pickle “hat” is served only on Thursdays.
River Twice’s double-pattied Mother Rucker burger was once bestowed upon diners in the middle of their tasting menus. They’re now available only on Monday nights.
Pietramala’s vegan burger, made from vegetables, Mycopolitan mushrooms, and repurposed ingredients left over from their other menu items, and which takes three days of preparation, instigates lines around their block when they’re served once Sunday every month.
The limited edition burger thrives in our post-pandemic search for comfort and the notion that everything is a steakhouse now (a nationwide trend that hasn’t quite reached Philly, but it’s coming for us. It’s only a matter of time).
A harbinger of the dominance of the steakhouse can be seen in a single space in nearby Washington D.C., a city with which we share a similar progression in our dining scene: Johnny Spero’s Reverie, a tasting menu-based, fine dining approach to seafood has closed. A steakhouse, Ox and Olive, will be opening in its Georgetown space.
The restaurants and cocktail bars beckon you with proclamations: come in for our burger! Only 12 per night! Come in for our burger! But line up around the block!
The limited edition burger is a trend that crops up periodically in New York, like it did in 2014, to the reluctance of chefs who noted that burgers are simply not profit drivers, and that they would bring the potential of a $45 check down to $25. Today’s limited edition burgers are unlikely to do the same in terms of numbers. Even Pine Street Grill’s almost no-frills burger costs $26.
The phenomenon of the limited edition burger marks a uniquely 2025-era blend of a comforting, recession-indicator food (at the end of the day, it’s ground meat in a hunk of bread) with the: scarcity principle frequently wielded by marketers and businesses. Limited editions trigger FOMO. Get one of these burgers and it’s like getting an Hermes Birkin bag, or the latest Supreme drop. They’re rare, you have to go through some sort of gauntlet to attain one, you feel lucky when you do.