What Makes a Great Burger (and How to Find One Near You)

Everywhere serves a burger, which is exactly the problem. When every menu in America has one, the word tells you nothing, and the gap between a menu filler burger and one made by people who care is enormous. Fortunately the burger world has clear schools and clear tells.

The two great schools

Smash burgers press a loose ball of beef hard onto a screaming griddle, trading thickness for a lacy, crispy crust of caramelized beef. They're thin, so they come in doubles, and the crust is the entire argument. Pub burgers go the other way: thick, half pound patties, cooked to a temperature like a steak, juicy in the middle. Neither is superior. Craving crust and grease-in-the-best-way: smash. Craving a knife and fork monument: pub. Knowing which mood you're in is most of ordering well.

The bun is load bearing

Great burgers die on bad bread. The bun should be soft, lightly toasted, and sized to the patty, a squishy potato roll or Martin's style bun for smash burgers, something sturdier for the pub beast. A cold, dry, oversized bakery bun is the most common tell that a kitchen doesn't take its burger seriously. The second most common: a patty so overworked and dense it bounces.

Reading a menu for burger intent

Places that care about their burger say so with specifics: the blend, the double patty option, the house sauce, American cheese unapologetically listed. Places where the burger is an obligation bury it under twenty toppings or gild it with truffle everything, and gold leaf on a burger is a costume, not a compliment. A short burger section done confidently beats a long one done defensively.

Where the great ones hide

Burger excellence clusters in three habitats: dedicated burger joints and smash windows, old school diners and drive ins that have made the same burger since your grandparents dated, and bars where the kitchen quietly obsesses over one perfect pub burger. Steakhouse lunch burgers are the sleeper pick, made from trimmings of very good beef. The habitat to distrust is the enormous menu where the burger is item forty six.

Finding yours

Decide the school first, smash or pub. Then search accordingly, since "smash burger" as a search finds specialists that "burger" buries under every bar in town. Read a review or two for the words crust, juicy, or bun. Then go early, order it with American cheese at least once in your life, and eat it while it's hot. Burgers wait for no one.