The 18 best burgers in America

This diner-style burger, which often requires hours-long waits to get your hands on, is a master class in textures and proportions. The “single” actually has two thin patties on a soft bun (the “double” is a three-patty behemoth), with gooey melted cheese, zippy pickles and creamy Dijonnaise balancing it out. You can add a quivering egg or thick-cut bacon on top, but it’s totally unnecessary.

April Bloomfield is NYC’s undisputed burger queen. The lamb burger at the Breslin, her restaurant in Ace Hotel New York, has converted countless beefeaters. But her chargrilled, Roquefort-topped pièce de résistance at the Spotted Pig is the stuff of legend. Nearly every table in the West Village gastropub is graced with at least one, and the buttery beef patty and sky-high stack of shoestring fries easily outshine the dining room’s glittering celebrity clientele. Never one to rest on her laurels, Bloomfield announced a dedicated burger joint, Salvation Burger, set to open in the Pod 51 hotel in late 2015.

The economics of scarcity are in full, ambrosial display at Tony Maws’s elegant, Gallic-accented restaurant. A limited quantity of the signature cheeseburger is prepared nightly and served to a lucky few at the handsome bar. The burger in question is an unapologetically cheffy affair: Maws grinds grass-fed local beef on-site, and then adds bone marrow for luxuriance and dehydrated miso for bright, salty umami. The sizeable patties are topped with house-made mace ketchup and Shelburne Farms cheddar, and served on buttered and griddled milk buns alongside vinegar pickles and celery root slaw.

Local loyalists can argue over the supposed sacrilege of the uptown mainstay’s recent downtown expansion all they want, but one thing is indisputable: Whichever location you frequent, the burgers are first-rate. Since 1972, the UES tavern has issued its superbly juicy, half-pound marvels, served open-faced with rings of red onion and crinkle-cut pickle chips, on green-checkered tabletops. A curlicue tangle of bacon, cooked to a crisp in the broiler, is technically optional (for 45¢ more), but real burger lovers know it’s mandatory.

The Belcampo name may be expanding rapidly across LA, but there’s no better way to eat its namesake burger than at the Grand Central Market stall, where you can sink your teeth into the finest meat in town. The beef—organic, sustainable and ground on-site by head butcher Jered Standing—is delightfully rich, and the cheddar and caramelized onions piled on top only add fuel to the discussion that this has to be one of the best burgers in the city.

In 2014, after nearly a decade of cooking only 24 cheeseburgers per night and serving them exclusively after 10pm, chef Linton Hopkins decided to give the people what they wanted. Namely, more cheeseburgers. The Kraft American–topped double patty, made with a 50-50 blend of brisket and grass-fed chuck, is now a regular menu item at this perpetually buzzy Buckhead gastropub. In 2015, Hopkins satisfied burger-hungry Atlantans yet again by launching a spinoff counter, H&F Burger, at hip food hall Ponce City Market.