Big Mac isn't the only '2 all beef patties' sandwich, but it's ours
By Sono Motoyama / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
As a new arrival to Pittsburgh last fall, I was ignorant of even the existence of such iconic Pittsburgh foods as chipped-chopped ham and the Primanti Bros. sandwich. In the case of the Big Mac, though, I, like most people, have had my share.
I grew up when the Big Mac jingle (“Two all-beef patties, special sauce …”) was ubiquitous and, to this day, I can recite the components of the sandwich because of it. My family didn’t go to McDonald’s regularly, but when we did, it was a treat.
I didn’t know, however, that it had a Pittsburgh history.
The story goes that Uniontown native Jim Delligatti, an early McDonald’s franchisee who had an exclusive territorial franchise for southwestern Pennsylvania, wanted to boost sales at his dozen restaurants. It took considerable effort to convince his corporate bosses to allow him to test a new sandwich, but they relented.
In 1967, he introduced the Big Mac at his Uniontown restaurant for 45 cents — more than twice the price of a regular hamburger at the time — and sales increased by 12% within a few months. He expanded it to his other restaurants, also with good results.
In 1968, McDonald’s rolled out the new sandwich nationwide. By the end of the following year, the Big Mac made up 19% of all McDonald’s sales.
Birth of a best seller
But how had Delligatti come up with the idea in the first place?
He had worked at drive-ins and car hops in Southern California in the ’50s. The 470-page 1986 tome, “McDonald’s: Behind the Arches” by former Business Week editor John F. Love, noted that this was the part of the country where Philadelphia native Bob Wian had launched the Big Boy sandwich, a double-decker hamburger with a triple-layer bun, in the 1930s.
Delligatti, who died in 2016 at 98, was one of dozens of operators who copied it, Love wrote.
Love quotes Delligatti on his creation of the Big Mac: “This wasn’t like discovering the light bulb. The bulb was already there. All I did was screw it in the socket.”
Mike Delligatti, Jim’s son, disputed the Bob’s Big Boy connection in a recent telephone interview.
“There was a lot of embellishment over the years,” said the Fox Chapel resident. “There were lots of places that had sandwiches like that, and he thought they needed one as well,” he noted of his father’s desire to expand menu options at his McDonald’s.
Whatever his inspiration, the elder Delligatti did have to put in considerable effort to develop his sandwich.
“You're always thinking of things to get a competitive edge, and my dad was thinking that he needed a bigger sandwich to compete in the market.
“He was trying to convince McDonald's to let him test a sandwich. And essentially what they said was, ‘OK, but you have to use all the ingredients that are in the restaurant.’”
The elder Delligatti eventually ignored those instructions and ordered a triple-slice bun. This prevented the hamburger patties from sliding around.
He also worked with his team to develop the “special sauce,” which, contrary to popular opinion, contains no ketchup and is not Thousand Island dressing. (A McDonald’s chef revealed the recipe 12 years ago.)
Big Mac vs. Superburger
As it happens, Eat’n Park was originally a franchise of Bob’s Big Boy and thus sold the Big Boy hamburger. The franchise agreement has since ended and the Eat’n Park double-decker burger is now called the Superburger, topped with their “Sauce Supreme.”
Eat’n Park recently rethought its burger, now using “hand-pressed” patties to jibe with the smashburger trend, so its lineage from the Big Boy may be getting tenuous. Nevertheless, I thought I’d test it to see if any hint of a Superburger-Big Boy-Big Mac relationship could be detected.
First I went to Delligatti’s kitschy Big Mac Museum in North Huntingdon to have a sandwich. (Jim Delligatti at one point owned 48 franchises; currently, the family has 21.)
The “museum” is a normally functioning McDonald’s restaurant, clean and pleasant, with a 14-foot Big Mac replica in the play area and a low display marking significant dates in Big Mac history in the dining room. If you didn’t know the display was there, you might miss it. There is also a bronze statue of Jim Delligatti on one side of the dining area.
A chatty worker told me how nice both Jim and Mike Delligatti were, with the father remembering the worker’s name even after a two-year break.
Though the Big Mac I had here had a surplus of lettuce and sauce, and the meat was a little dry, it was recognizably a Big Mac — evidence of McDonald’s genius in replicating its product worldwide.
Comparing it to the Superburger was perhaps a little unfair, since I’ve had dozens of Big Macs in my life and they have trained my taste buds. I chose the nearest Eat’n Park to me, on the North Side, to try my first-ever Superburger.
Certainly, the general specifications of two burgers are the same (sesame seed bun, two patties), but unless you were a Martian, no one would confuse a Big Mac and a Superburger.
The Superburger comes with its signature pickle on top of the bun (why?) and has a more homely, less cookie-cutter appearance than a Big Mac. I was impressed with the thickness of the shake I ordered with it, and the appreciable salty crunch of the crinkle-cut fries.
I was less impressed with the burger, finding the patties greasy and the sauce too acidic. I found myself wanting to add ketchup — something I’ve never done to a Big Mac.
When I’d asked Mike Delligatti what made the Big Mac different from other double-decker burgers, he said, “That tangy sauce is the winner.”
Changing market
Over the years, I’ve often sought out McDonald’s as a comfortably familiar haven (with a bathroom!) even when abroad. But now that I’m past my teens, I’m ambivalent about the chain, for a number of reasons.
Just counting the 580 calories of a Big Mac could make you dizzy.
And I’m not alone in my hesitations about the brand.
Consumers tastes are changing, with many seeking healthier options when eating out. McDonald’s sales fell 1.4% in the fourth quarter last year — the largest sales decline the behemoth has seen since the pandemic — after an E. coli outbreak last fall.
These days, when I want to go out for a burger, rather than just fill my belly, I’m apt to seek a more rough-hewn sort of joint with thick burgers of pasture-raised beef, accompanied by house-made sauces and maybe hand-cut fries.
Until I realized that this sort of place too was becoming a kind of replicable chain — and the butt of zoomer jokes and memes: “a millennial burger joint” started by “just two guys with a crazy idea.”
I think I might just take a break from burgers for a while.