Don’t doxx yourself please
I picked up food poisoning eating beef tartar in a third world country. Came back home, couldn’t eat anything for 3 days.
On day number four, I broke my fast with a mozza burger from A&W.
I’m sure it was the lack of any taste for the previous 4 days, but that was the very best thing I’ve ever ate. Such vivid and pronounced flavours.
It was unforgettable.
Food after gastroenteritis is the best. Anything will taste like the best food you have ever tasted because your stomach demands to be filled.
Seattle has a chain called Dick’s. Their burgers are tasty and cheap. A couple of Deluxes after a night out really hits the spot.
Father’s Office in Santa Monica. You get it one way, no changes. If you want ketchup on it, F Off. Heck, if you want ketchup for your sweet potato fries (the seasoning on them is delightful), F Off again. But, and I say this after trying a million burgers (slight exaggeration), no contest.
That said, somebody commented with a burger in West LA that I’ll be shortlisting.
It’s a tie for me.
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A place where they served only the bun and meat, and you got to serve yourself your own salad and sauces. I made some absurdly tall burgers. The taste was phenomenal too. Very handy place when I was a student with very little money.
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Playing a gig in a small town. Saw a burger called The Carnivore. Was assured it was worth the cost, so I bought one. This thing had mince patty, bacon, sausage, steak, chop (pork or lamb, can’t remember which), then cheese, onion, lettuce, tomato, egg… and I’m probably still forgetting something it had. It was monstrous. It took me almost an hour to eat it, and I enjoyed every minute.
If your #1 is in San Jose, CA, I’d be willing to bet it was “juicy burger”. Still to this day, I’ve never had a better fast food burger.
Not San Jose, and not Juicy Burger. It was a small franchise that went broke.
Fuddruckers? Bonus points for the name.
Depending on your age, maybe Burger Chef and Jeff? Some nonsense I’ve heard my parents talk about, been out of business for a bit.
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At Hubert Keller’s Burger Bar in Vegas. Wagyu burger black and blue.
Second best is the house burger at Tolon in Fort Wayne, IN.
Third best is one I cooked over charcoal at a campsite in North Dakota.
Tolon is an absolute shining gem of food in Fort Wayne and I’m thoroughly amused seeing it mentioned here. I’ve never had the burger but the duck fat frites are always great.
I’m not sure if this technically qualifies as a ‘burger’, but I’d say…
Waffle House Texas Cheese Steak Melt, but with mushrooms instead of onions.
About a decade ago at a job in Philly, we’d hunt down the spOt Burger cart (that’s how they capitalized it). Tiny little trailer/cart only big enough for one person to stand in, and this guy would park it somewhere new around center city/university city area every day. My memory is a little hazy so I might have some details wrong, but every day he’d grind a blend of ribeye and filet fresh to make the burgers in his cart, cooked around a medium, and served them on a brioche bun with pickled red cabbage and some other fixings. He got the fat content just perfect with the steak blend, and the toppings were unexpected but incredible together.
I haven’t been back in awhile but I heard he was opening a brick and mortar restaurant because his cart was so successful. Hope it’s true!
Casino El Camino in Austin TX has some amazing burgers. Total dive bar, but worth it for the food.
Not knowing it was plant-based, I got a monstrous jumbo something-or-other burger from Monty’s Good Burger in LA.
Honestly I almost freaked out at how good it was, and even went back to the place just to tell them it was the best burger I ever had.
It’s the one thing pulling me west
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Nick’s Burger from Nick’s Tavern in Lemont, IL. 1/2 lb of deliciousness, built for the industrial workers at the plants along the Des Plaines River.
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Hothead Burger from Lucky Monk in South Barrington, IL. T’was the perfect combo of spicy and fresh cow. Sadly, it is no longer on the menu.
Yeah, you get two best burgers. Complaints to /dev/null.
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Terry’s Turf Club in Cincinnati. Haven’t been there in a long time, and they went through some major changes a few years ago because apparently Terry was a major creep, but God damn did he know how to make a burger.
It was during a trip to Norway. I was in Stavanger, walking around with my friend. It was noon. We stumbled across a hamburger stand on the street next to a monument or something.
The burger (with no side dish) was quite expensive for street food (about $20), but we realized it was not made with beef or pork. It was reindeer meet.
And also the best fucking burger I’ve ever had.
Gordon Ramsey Burger in Vegas was maybe one of the best craft burgers I’ve had.
There’s a sports bar in my hometown that makes the best burgers I’ve ever had in my life. They’re always perfectly cooked.
Sometimes I can get the grill at home (local meat) to offer me up one that would never compare to a restaurant
This is where I’m at. With a cast iron pan and a decent stovetop it’s very easy to make a proper smashburger at home.
I also can’t handle the texture of ground beef at anything below well, and I don’t like egg yolks, so that already disqualifies a lot of the popular, fancy pub-style burgers around here.
