It is customary at this time of year for columnists to make bold, potentially foolish predictions about the year to come, supported by unscientific personal anecdotes and an out-of-date study found on the internet.

I intend to honour that tradition by clearing my throat, rattling a spoon against my wine glass, and declaring that in 2006 we will see the death of one of the greatest American icons of all time. Yes, you heard it here first: the United States will next year find itself mourning the “End of the Hamburger”.

There will, of course, be a national service held in Washington, to mark the event. A silver platter of Big Macs, borne aloft by a dozen chunky, breathless pallbearers, will be carried to the Arlington National Cemetery. And an epitaph will be written in ketchup above their final resting place. “They tasted good with cheese,” it will say.

Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy a hamburger as much as the next person. And I’m no McDonald’s-hater. After two weeks of covering Hurricane Katrina, the first proper meal I found was at a McDonald’s restaurant in Mississippi. The place was so clean you could have eaten your fries off the lavatory seat, and the smiling woman at the drive-thru window seemed to know all the patrons by name. It was a Sunday, and I was the only customer not wearing a tie.

But here’s the problem: the hamburger belongs to a different era. The name itself is a giveaway — it comes from Hamburg in Germany, where some say Arab traders inspired the locals to combine kibbeh (made of ground lamb) with a roll to create the modern takeaway sandwich. In other words, it’s the food of Donald Rumsfeld’s Old Europe, repackaged by white Americans. And after a century of innovation, the hamburger, like the internal combustion engine, has nowhere else to go.

How, for example, can you improve on the Monster Thickburger, served by Carl’s Jr with patties made of two thirds of a pound beef, four strips of bacon and three slices of cheese, for $5.49 (£3.16)?

When I first moved to California in 2002, I felt overwhelmed by the hamburger history around me. Only a few miles east of Los Angeles is the city of San Bernardino, where the brothers Dick and Mac McDonald opened their first hotdog stand in 1938. They later invented the “Speedee Service System” and thus gave birth to the modern American fast food industry. California’s contribution to burgerology continues today with In’n’Out Burger and Fatburger (my personal favourite), which make every beef pattie fresh to order.

But I realised that the end was near one sunny lunchtime in the autumn of 2002 when, out of curiosity, I visited a restaurant called Chipotle in Beverly Hills. The decor of the place was hip and modern, and the woman behind the counter was blonde and wearing a black dress.

I ordered a burrito. It was a tortilla filled with marinated steak, rice, cheese, sour cream, grilled onions and peppers, salsa and lettuce. When wrapped and covered in silver foil, it looked barely more substantial than a Big Mac, but weighed about as much as a bowling ball.

I am delighted to report that my burrito was delicious, especially when served with tortilla chips and fresh guacamole. It also seemed curiously healthy. I have barely been back to a hamburger joint since, and am now a regular patron of Chipotle (owned by McDonald’s) as well as Baja Fresh (owned by Wendy’s) and Sharkey’s (independent).

Like the hamburger, the modern burrito — which, I was told, meant “little donkey” in Spanish — was conceived in the 1930s as a bastardised foreign import. But it took 60 years to reach the mass market. Millions of Americans have swapped Big Macs for burritos. According to the NPD Group of market researchers, sales of burritos jumped by 10 per cent to 993 million in 2004 (the most recent data available), while sales of hamburgers rose by only 1 per cent to 8.7 billion. Using unscientific forecasting software (my calculator), I predict that sales of burritos for 2005 will top one billion for the first time in American history.

So that’s it, then. Farewell, Big Mac. Adios, double cheeseburger. The little donkey is coming.


- WARNING. After three years of loyalty to Chipotle, I decided to look up the calorie count of my favourite burrito. It contains 1,827 of them. That is the equivalent of more than three Big Macs; and proof that life is not fair.

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