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.
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
I’ve lived in LA for 10 years now and have been vegan for the past four years.
All of the best food I’ve had has been after going vegan. I’ve learned to cook well (I never liked handling bloody dead animal parts) and I’ve discovered much more variety in the vegan food scene than I think I’ve had in my life.
The only downside? Going back to my hellhole red state is rough and if I can’t cook I end up eating a lot of Impossible Whoppers, fries and salads.
I’m not vegan but I agree. I’ve said this before but meat is kind of a crutch and branching out into plant based menus has led to a lot of creativity. Plus plant based dishes look better— not terribly important, but nice.
I find 11MP’s food to be better now that it’s entirely plant based, and have found myself using less and less meat at home. Besides unhealthy fast food for the calories while bulking and some restaurants that aren’t as forward thinking, I’ve found myself accidentally almost pescatarian these days. Meat based dishes just lack a certain something.
One day I’d like to be vegan but I lack the strength of will. It does feel like talented chefs like Crenn or Kofoed could have me there sooner than expected, and largely unintentionally.
The best burger I ever had was in New York. I can’t remember then name of the place, or even where it was but it had an autographed picture of Regis Philbin on the wall with a comment on how much he loved the burger there.
On to the burger:
That first bite… oh, what heaven that first bite is. The bun, like a sesame freckled breast of an angel, resting gently on the ketchup and mustard below, flavors mingling in a seductive pas de deux. And then…a pickle! The most playful little pickle!
Then a slice of tomato, a leaf of lettuce and a…a patty of ground beef so exquisite, swirling in your mouth, breaking apart, and combining again in a fugue of sweets and savor so delightful. This is no mere sandwich of grilled meat and toasted bread- This is God, speaking to us in food.
Oh i know that place! It’s the corner bistro!
Oh, the Corner Bistro! It’s amazing, I spent a quarter of my life searching for the best burger in New York City, but silly me, it never occurred to me to check the highest-rated burger in the Zagat guide. Wow, thanks a lot, guy. Let me return the favor.
Great cup of coffee: Starbucks.
It’s so much more than just a burger!
quietly turns around
Often it is the bun that can destroy a burger. There is a limit to how much variety and taste in the meat. But most times it is the main thing people focus on. How it is cooked factors a great deal mind you.
A good burger is far more then the meat alone.
I make myself one every week, green chile cheeseburger.
Yeah, homemade is best. It takes a bit of practice though because there’s so many things one can use. A good burger doesn’t have too much stuff and not too little and it needs balanced flavours and textures.
Recipe?
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.
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.
Coming down from 5 days in the mountains backpacking, eating freeze-dried food. It’s not that I was suffering; I like the meals I pick, and I done this dozens of times before, but for some reason, that burger was fantastic. It was at the first restaurant we came across, and the beer was on tap and cold.
Maybe because it’d been a particularly grueling hike back out, and we’d skipped the last camp site and were racing the sun.
Good burger.
Not sure I’ll be able to get over In N Out Burger. For a chain their consistency is incredible. Good quality ingredients, but most specifically, they always get the toast on the bun perfect, soft in the center, crispy just around the edges, and thousand Island style dressing on a burger is the shit.
In N Out burger might be the sole push I need to leave the east coast tbh. I spent last summer in CO and probably ate my body weight in those burgers and animal style fries
Hell just go to Vegas. Flights are shorter and cheaper.
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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It was a burger I ate when the chef was going to kill us all.
Did you eat the whole thing or get some of it in a doggy bag to go?
I really liked that movie, but it feels impossible to convince anyone to watch, lol.
This restaurant in Argentina. Didn’t even go there for the burger. Wasn’t sure what to get on the menu. Place was on the “at least where a collar” type with low lighting and cocktails and all that. Type of place you’d usually eat with fork and knife.
Anyways, I saw they had a burger on the menu and the ingredients just sounded good. Nothing far out there or anything, but it gave me the craving. When it finally came out, the first bite was so. Fucking. Good. Meat in general has a very high floor in Argentina, but that burger was something else. My wife agrees that was the best burger we’ve ever tried as well.
We went back to Argentina about a year after we had had that burger. About a month in, I surprised my wife with a reservation at the restaurant. We had been talking about getting that burger again for weeks before coming to Argentina. We get to the place, order a drink, and pick up the menu. For about 2 minutes the table was silent. Then we started looking at each other quizzically. “Do you see the burger?”, I asked. She shakes her head. We signal to the waiter that we have a Q. He comes over and we ask him about the burger. “Ah, I’m sorry, the chef took it off the menu a couple of months ago. I guess not enough people were ordering it.”. Man, both our hearts sank.
TLDR; life is unfair. The best burgers can only be eaten once.
That story made me sad for you both.
London, UK: Burger & Beyond, Bleecker Burger (RIP the Bleecker black), maybe Patty & Bun
North West, UK: Almost Famous, maybe Burgerism
What I fancy ordering from these places varies based on mood, but they’re good enough there’s pretty much no bad choices
There’s nothing else in the same category I’ve had in this country so far, but open to suggestions.
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.
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.
Philadelphia, but I don’t remember the restaurant: I had something called a “French Toast Burger.” In place of buns were two pieces of French Toast and it was topped with egg and cheddar, and came with maple syrup on the side (this is the only time I’ve ever gotten real maple in a restaurant.) It was the best meal that I will never eat again.
