Consumers’ Attitudes to Gourmet Burgers: The Case of the NOMA Cheeseburger

Purpose: This article explores consumers' attitudes to the trend of gourmet burgers, notably the gourmet burgers' combination of highbrow food (gourmet) and lowbrow food (fast food). The authors use the case of the NOMA cheeseburger from the iconic New Nordic restaurant NOMA. Design/methodology/approach: The data set consists of interviews (n = 20) with urban Danish consumers attending the NOMA burger pop-up. Findings: The analysis highlights an acceptance among informants of “gourmetfied” burgers. This signals a change in the culinary status of burgers in Danish food culture. The authors also discovered some ambivalence in relation to the highbrow-lowbrow negotiations: while all informants celebrate the casualization of NOMA during the burger pop-up, half of the informants found the burger underwhelming: it did not live up to the edginess of the NOMA brand. Practical implications: The authors believe this research can inform people working with culinary highbrow-lowbrow mix in their food designs, notably in relation to developing and matching the relation between symbolic and material aspects of the food design. Originality/value: The authors argue that the concept of transgression can help us theorize how consumers accept, refuse, and negotiate boundaries in relation to gourmet burgers, and more generally between food consumption mixing highbrow and lowbrow elements. More particularly, the authors propose to distinguish between symbolic, social, and material transgressions. This perspective might also be interesting for practitioners in the field.