Best Cheeseburgers in America
Photo by Andrew Cebulka/Stocksy. Design by Lauren DeLuca for Yahoo Travel.
By Dan Myers
If you’re like most people, you probably think that a burger isn’t a burger if it doesn’t have some cheese on it. Thankfully, there’s no shortage of amazing cheeseburgers out there, and — from an Atlanta legend served on a home-baked bun to a no-frills burger that’s been a Kansas City staple for more than 70 years — we’ve tracked down the country’s best.
Every year since 2013, we’ve set out to find the best burgers in America, and in June we named the top 101. Our system for ranking these burgers is extensive and thorough: We started by assembling a list of nearly 250 non-chain burgers from all across the country, made up of suggestions from burger authorities, online reviews, and existing best-of lists both in print and online. We then compiled these into a survey which we sent out to a panel of 70 noted writers, journalists, bloggers, and culinary authorities from across the country, asking them to vote for their favorites, limiting their votes to ones that they’d tried within the past two years. The results were tallied, and the burgers that received the most votes made the ranking.
In order to distill that list into a ranking of the top cheeseburgers, we first needed to ask ourselves a question: What exactly is a cheeseburger? For our purposes, we’re defining a cheeseburger as a burger patty that’s topped (or stuffed) with just cheese, as well as the usual condiments and the optional lettuce, tomato, pickles, and onions. No bacon, no green chile, no mushrooms, no egg, no avocado. To be a great cheeseburger, the emphasis needs to be on the meat and the cheese, period.
Read on to learn which cheeseburgers are America’s best. It’s easy to make a cheeseburger, but it’s a lot harder than it looks to make one that’s truly great. All of these burgers are made with high-quality beef (no lamb or turkey here), and they’re all properly proportioned, well-seasoned, nicely seared, and made with love (or at least with skill). We apologize in advance if you read this before eating lunch, because by the time you’re through, you’re going to be starving.
#10 Bill’s Bar & Burger, New York City
Photo: Bill’s Bar & Burger
Bill’s Bar & Burger is run by the hospitality company BR Guest, also known for upscale offerings like Dos Caminos, Strip House, and Ruby Foo’s. The burgers served here, made using a meat blend from celebrity butcher Pat LaFrieda, receive the level of care and attention they deserve: The 6-ounce fresh-ground hand-pressed patties get a deep, crispy sear on a flattop and a slice of melty American cheese before being tucked into a soft squishy bun, served with lettuce, pickles, and tomato with a squirt of secret sauce to top it off. The meat is loosely packed, and just crumbly enough, super juicy thanks to a high fat content.
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#9 Zuni Café, San Francisco
Photo: Zuni Café
The lunch-only grass-fed burger at this San Francisco classic is ground in-house, medium-lean, and comes on grilled rosemary focaccia slathered with aïoli. Beecher’s Flagship or Bayley Hazen blue are available options, as are grilled onions or sliced heirloom tomatoes. There’s very much of an only-in-Northern-California feel about the whole arrangement, which is just fine with us.
#8 Husk, Charleston, South Carolina
Photo: Husk
So what’s the secret to the burger at Husk, Sean Brock’s Charleston landmark? Bacon ground right into the patty. Brock has been on a personal quest to perfect the burger, and after eating his cheeseburger you’ll most likely agree that he’s achieved his goal. House-made buns are steamed, sliced, toasted, and smeared with butter and beef fat. The two patties are a blend of chuck and hickory-smoked Benton’s bacon, seared on a ripping-hot nonstick griddle and scraped off to retain their crust. The toppings? Three slices of American cheese, shaved white onions in between the patties, bread-and-butter pickles, a “special sauce” that closely resembles the one at In-N-Out, and lettuce and tomato only when they’re in season. Sean Brock: in relentless pursuit of burger perfection. You: lucky.
#7 Le Pigeon, Portland, Ore.
Photo: Le Pigeon
When Gabriel Rucker first opened Le Pigeon in 2006, he only served five of these outstanding burgers per night. How cruel. Until recently, it was also available at Rucker’s downtown spot Little Bird, where it’s been replaced with the bistro’s own signature burger. Today, thankfully, the burger can be purchased at all times at the original Le Pigeon. And what a burger it is: A thick square patty of beef from a local farm is seasoned with salt and pepper; grilled (a rarity); topped with sharp Tillamook white Cheddar, an iceberg lettuce slaw, thick slices of grilled pickled onions, mayo, mustard, and house-made ketchup; and piled atop a ciabatta bun. If you find yourself in Portland, run, don’t walk, to this burger.
#6 Holeman & Finch Public House, Atlanta
Photo: Yelp / Mike C
Only 24 burgers used to be served nightly at Holeman & Finch Public House, but thankfully for us they’ve been made a permanent menu item. Each double-patty burger of fresh-ground grass-fed chuck and brisket comes topped with American cheese, pickles, onions, and homemade ketchup, and is served on a toasted house-baked bun alongside fresh-cut fries. Chef Linton Hopkins (who developed this burger while he was battling cancer; it’s the only food he didn’t lose his taste for) chose to offer it on such a limited basis in order to let the other items on his menu get their due, but you can save those for the second visit.
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#5 Luger Burger, Peter Luger, Brooklyn
Photo: Yelp / Mike C
Because of this burger’s location in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and its lunch-only appearance on the menu, out-of-town visitors free to venture over to this legendary steakhouse during the week are likely to have an easier time than locals experiencing one of New York City’s best burgers. There are no bells and whistles, but Peter Luger has been handling meat since 1887, and its rich, half-pound Luger Burger, made from porterhouse and prime chuck roll trimmings, is worth figuring out how to sneak out of the office for a long lunch. Burgers are molded into a coffee cup, emptied onto the high-temperature broilers used for the restaurant’s steaks until they develop a dark crust, and then settled into a sesame-studded bun. While cheese isn’t absolutely necessary, there’s no reason why you should leave it off.
#4 Corner Bistro, New York
Photo: Yelp / Alexandra C
This always-crowded Greenwich Village institution, a semi-dive bar (no real dive bar sells a line of branded casual clothing, or opens outposts in Long Island City), is justly famous for its big no-nonsense burgers, cooked under a salamander-like broiler, draped with American cheese, and served on a classic sesame bun with the usual trimmings. Old-timers complain that it isn’t what it used to be, but the burgers still taste darn good to us.
Related: What Burgers Look Like Around the World
#3 JG Melon, New York City
Photo: JG Melon/ Facebook
According to legend, burgermeister George Motz wanted to include J.G. Melon’s definitive bar burger in the first edition of his book Hamburger America, but nobody at the place would return his calls — maybe because they were too busy actually turning out the darn things. The burger is simple and classic: a healthy slab of ground beef (the exact formula is kept a secret) sizzled on the griddle, served draped with American cheese on a toasted bun, with pickles and red onions on the side.
#2 The Spotted Pig, New York City
Photo: Photo Modified: Flickr / Daniel Zemans / CC BY 4.0
The burger at The Spotted Pig, a restaurant that is widely considered responsible for launching the high-end gastropub trend, is a wonder. Chef and co-owner April Bloomfield created a half-pound behemoth of prime grilled beef, topped with a layer of creamy, stinky Roquefort, and sandwiched inside a brioche-style bun. Served alongside rosemary-scented shoestring fries, it’s the kind of burger that will force you to close your eyes after taking the first bite and just be with the beefy, cheesy decadence.
#1 Au Cheval, Chicago
Photo: Au Cheval
Is the burger served at Au Cheval “the perfect griddle burger?” According to Bon Appétit, it is. Its beauty lies in its simplicity: two patties (or three, if you order a “double”) of no-frills ground beef topped with Cheddar, Dijonnaise, a few thin slices of pickles, and served on a soft toasted bun from Chicago’s Z Baking. The patties are wonderfully crusty, the fries are fried in lard, and just about everything about this burger is perfect.
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