No Ketchup, Bricks From the Colosseum and a Month Off to Count Spoons: The Lassen Family Story Behind Louis’ Lunch

On Crown Street downtown, inside a little brick building with red shutters, three cast-iron broilers stand on their ends like old-fashioned safes. Somebody behind the counter slides a wire rack of hand-packed beef into one, and a few minutes later it comes out on two slices of white toast. No bun. No ketchup. Do not ask for ketchup.

Louis’ Lunch, at 261 Crown St., has been serving New Haven that way for longer than almost anyone can remember, and it is the place the Library of Congress lists as the home of the first hamburger sandwich. Most New Haveners have been at least once. Fewer know the story behind the walls they are leaning on while they wait.

Here is how a lunch wagon became a landmark, the family that still runs it, the bricks that came from around the world, and what to say when you get to the front of the line.

A lunch wagon, a hurried customer and a pile of steak trimmings

Louis Lassen started out in 1895 with a horse-drawn lunch wagon, according to the restaurant. ConnecticutHistory.org, a project of CT Humanities, says the wagon began on Meadow Street selling to factory workers and traveled between factories on Temple and George streets. By 1907 Lassen had settled on George Street, parking the wagon beside a tannery, and about a decade later he bought the tannery building, giving himself a real kitchen and indoor seats.

The famous moment came in 1900. As the family tells it on its website, a man rushed in and told Lassen he needed something he could eat on the run. Lassen put his own blend of ground steak trimmings between two slices of toast and sent him on his way. When U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro honored the restaurant on its 105th anniversary in the Congressional Record in July 2000, she described Lassen as a frugal businessman who did not like to waste the extra beef from his steak sandwiches, so he ground it up, grilled it and served it on bread, “without ketchup.”

Athens, Texas; Hamburg, New York; and Seymour, Wisconsin, all have their own claims to the first hamburger. ConnecticutHistory.org notes that the New York and Wisconsin claims rest on oral history rather than documents and artifacts, while the Lassens can point to a working broiler that dates to the 1890s. In 2000, at DeLauro’s nomination, the Library of Congress named Louis’ Lunch a Connecticut “Local Legacy,” describing it as “the home of the first hamburger and first steak sandwich in U.S. history.”

The brick Louis’ Lunch building with red shutters and leaded windows on Crown Street in New Haven

Ten years of fighting City Hall, and bricks from the Colosseum

The original George Street building nearly did not survive. In the 1960s, urban renewal plans called for a medical high-rise on the block. According to the Congressional Record, thousands of people turned out in the 1960s and 1970s when the city announced plans to raze Louis’, and the building was designated a historic landmark in 1967.

After fighting City Hall for 10 years, Ken Lassen, Louis’ grandson, agreed to move the luncheonette, DeLauro said. The restaurant’s history says the plans for its safe relocation were finalized just hours before the deadline, and the building was loaded onto a truck for a 30-minute trip to Crown Street.

Then the customers rebuilt it. Patrons sent thousands of bricks from all over the world to help put the walls back together, and each one has a story, the restaurant says. DeLauro’s tribute described Ken Lassen giving guests a “tour of the walls” that included stones from Rome’s Colosseum, paving bricks from Lisbon, Portugal, and a chunk of rock from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The New Haven Preservation Trust later put up a plaque marking Louis’ Lunch as the origin of the hamburger, according to ConnecticutHistory.org.

Wooden booths, a stained-glass lamp and a leaded window inside Louis’ Lunch

Four generations of Lassens

Louis’ Lunch has been in the Lassen family for four generations. When the Library of Congress recorded it in 2000, Ken Lassen, then 82, was the third-generation owner, and DeLauro noted that the third and fourth generations were running it together.

Today, the restaurant says, Louis’ great-grandson, Jeff Lassen, carries on the tradition. The family still does things the way they say they always have. The burgers are hand-rolled from a proprietary blend of five cuts of beef, ground fresh every day, and cooked to order in the original cast-iron broilers, which the restaurant dates to 1898. The broilers stand upright, and the restaurant describes them as vertical gas broilers.

Three antique vertical cast-iron broilers and a rack of burgers at Louis’ Lunch

Garnishes are limited to cheese, tomato and onion. “The Lassen family hold firm on their desire not to offer any condiments,” the website says. In DeLauro’s words, requests for ketchup or mustard “are briskly declined.” ConnecticutHistory.org adds a few more details regulars will recognize: the toast is Pepperidge Farm white bread, a brand born in Norwalk, the burgers go out on paper plates, and the soda of choice is Foxon Park from East Haven.

Learn the lingo before you order

The restaurant offers first-timers a short lesson in what it calls “Louis’ Lingo.” A regular might walk up and say, “Give me two cheese works, a salad and a birch.” Translated, that is two hamburgers with cheese, tomato and onion, cooked medium rare on toast, an order of potato salad and a birch beer.

The restaurant says there is more lingo where that came from, but it suggests learning it firsthand from the regulars. “After all, we don’t want to give away all our secrets!”

A few other house rules are worth knowing. The restaurant says it suggests burgers cooked to medium, so say so at the counter if you want something different. Seating is first come, first served, and there are no reservations. If you already have your food, the staff asks that you take a seat, and one will open up for the next person.

A packed crowd of customers inside Louis’ Lunch

What locals and visitors say

Louis’ shows a selection of its Google reviews on its own site. “Best burgers ever from the birthplace of the burger,” Jason wrote. Gina kept it shorter: “A MUST when in New Haven!!!”

Anthony said it plainly: “Absolutely the perfect burger. Nothing fancy about it, just delicious and nutritious. Very old school. I would be there twice a day if I lived in New Haven.”

Tomer came for the landmark. “I came for the history and stayed for the burger,” he wrote. “I was surprised that a burger cooked using such an old method can compete so well with modern burgers, and in fact it is the juiciest burger I had in the US. It’s also surprisingly cheap given the quality and given the fact that it’s such a neat attraction.”

National food writers keep coming back too. The restaurant’s press page lists a spot on Food & Wine’s 2025 list of top burger spots in the U.S., along with features in Smithsonian Magazine and the Washington Post and appearances on Food Network and the Travel Channel.

What to order

There is really one thing on the menu, and it is the reason you came. The restaurant does not post prices on its website and says they are subject to change. Here is how to order it.

A “cheese works.” The full house burger: melted cheese, tomato and onion on white toast. It is the order in the restaurant’s own lingo lesson.

A Louis’ Lunch cheeseburger with tomato on white toast

Tomato and onion, no cheese. If you want to taste the beef blend on its own terms, skip the cheese. The house recommends medium.

A Louis’ Lunch burger with tomato and onion on toast, cut in half

Just cheese. The simplest upgrade, with the cheese melted right on the burger.

A cheeseburger on white toast on a paper plate at Louis’ Lunch

Add a Foxon Park and “a salad.” In Louis’ lingo, “a salad” means potato salad, and a “birch” means a birch beer. Foxon Park sodas from East Haven are the classic bottle to go with the burger.

A Louis’ Lunch burger on a paper plate next to a bottle of Foxon Park orange soda

If you go

Louis’ Lunch is at 261 Crown St.; the phone number is 203-562-5507. The restaurant lists its hours as noon to 8 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, noon to 11:30 p.m. Thursday, and noon to midnight Friday and Saturday. It is closed Sunday and Monday.

Plan around two long breaks. The restaurant says it always closes the week after New Year’s and the entire month of August for its annual “Counting of Spoons.”

Timing matters. The restaurant says its busiest time is at opening, when the line can last through the first three hours, and that late afternoon and early evening are generally a great time to visit. Parking is limited on the street, and there is a paid lot next to the restaurant. Check louislunch.com before you head over.