Look who joined the patty

For years, great beef meant great burgers. But a new variation on the mince patty costs less, delivers on flavour and tastes excellent with lamb. Take a bite out of the revolution. You want fries with that?

- VIR SANGHVI

In most of the world, a hamburger is a minced beef patty in a bun. In India, for obvious reasons, you won't find a good beef patty (even in the states where serving beef is legal). Fast-food chains get around this by improvising. McDonald's tried a goat burger when it launched, but switched to chicken and vegetable alternatives. Burger King has had some success with a lamb patty, but it is not like the burger that is famous all over the world.

A high-quality, non-fast-food burger is also hard to find in India. It should be made from the sort of beef that goes into a steak, and served so that the centre is moist and juicy, while the outside is slightly crusted.

Over the last two decades, the burger has gone more and more upmarket. Joel Robuchon put foie gras into the small burgers at his L'Atelier chain. Daniel Boulud introduced luxury burgers to New York. The burger at Danny Meyer's Shake Shack is such good value that there is much speculation about the formula used to constitute the beef mince. California's In-N-Out Burger and Five Guys have their own cult followings.

Until recently, a restaurant burger needed a plump, juicy patty to distinguish it from fast-food versions.