Go to town

anybody know the origin of this phrase? used, for example, if i'm eating a burger very quickly, without paying attention to anything else, you might say i'm going to town on that burger.

They're still saying that? In the 1950s, my mother and her garden-club friends used the expression when talking about a plant that had bloomed profusely. "That pelargonium that I started from a slip--well, this spring it just went to town." I suppose it comes from earlier times when most people lived in the countryside and a trip to town was a major adventure.

Right you are. But this source says there's a different meaning in England.

GO TO TOWN - "Do something exuberantly or efficiently. In England the saying is hundreds of years old but has a different meaning: to arrive or make one's mark where significant things are happening. In the sense of doing something with gusto it is of American origin; probably dating from the 19th century when going to town for an outing or a spree was a big day for country folk." From The Dictionary of Cliches by James Rogers (Ballantine Books, New York, 1985).