Standards

TL;DR

This list is subjective. If your tastes align with mine, you will find this very agreeable, and if not, recoil in horror of my palate. Regardless, I believe this to be a worthwhile resource.

My evaluation tends to be almost exclusively based on taste. The price will only affect the score if it deviates greatly from the food quality. Same for portion size.

Bon appétit!

Guidance

To those of you still reading past the TL;DR, know that your dedication is appreciated. I consider you fundamentally better people.

Let me once again stress that this list is entirely subjective. I considered a more neutral approach but I ultimately abandoned it. People's tastes are too varied and food is simply too personal to try and work around it. I therefore recommend you simply give in and adopt my tastes exactly. Or you could recalibrate my reviews to match your biases, I guess.

There are some things I try to do to help with the latter:

• I list all the ingredients of the burgers (and sides, if included). I did not do this from the start so there may be a few burgers on this list where that section's missing but for the most part it's present.
• There are inevitably going to be some ingredients I can't properly score. Like jalapeños, for example. I don't like them. Never have. That also means I can't properly convey the difference between a good and a bad one. They're all unpalatable to me.
  In case I order a burger with ingredients like that, I will make a note of it in the review and tell you roughly how big of an impact their inclusion in the burger had on my score.

Since I probably tried more burgers than you (not trying to flex here but statistically speaking that's most likely the case), try to find a burger we've both eaten and see whether you agree with my assessment on it. You'll eventually be able to recognize and understand my preferences and biases and discover where we agree and where we diverge.

Evaluation

Unlike some of my "competitors" out there, I don't fuck around. I review and score burgers almost entirely based on taste alone.

This has undoubtedly raised some eyebrows. "What else would he be scoring," you may be asking yourselves, bewilderingly. If this was indeed your initial reaction, you've come to the right place. I won't name any names but I shit you not, I've seen reviews out there from people who factor completely unrelated things like lunchroom's ambiance or slight perceived rudeness of waiters in their burger scores. You won't get any of that nonsense here.

The levels of tomfoolery an establishment would need to stoop to for me to even mention it would have to be truly extreme. If I ordered a burger at a restaurant that turned out to be a literal meth lab which the police decided to raid in the middle of my lunch and during the commotion a cartel member disguised as a waiter accidentally shot me in the knee - but the burger was otherwise solid - I would at most write an off-handed comment about the ordeal at the end of my review. But the score would remain unaffected.

Back to the matter at hand. My burger evaluation calculation is based on the following (in order of importance):

• Ingredients
  Their selection, their individual freshness and quality, and their cohesive harmoniousness.
• Portion size
  Relevant but plays a very minor role. It will influence the score only if well below or above average.
• Price/Performance Ratio
  Will only affect the score if it's wildly out of step with what is actually served.

Scores

This is what the main scores translate to in practice, roughly speaking:

As good as it gets. Every ingredient is of the highest quality and they are sensibly chosen, achieving perfect harmony. No one will be disappointed ordering this.

Close to perfect but with relatively minor flaws. Some ingredients may not be of the highest possible caliber or there is a rogue ingredient present that doesn't fit, throwing off the balance.

There is a serious flaw or a series of minor flaws. The balance could be quite off, the ingredients may be of only average quality, there may be one or more ingredients that don't fit. Even so, a burger like that is still above average, generally worth buying.

There is a deal-breaking flaw or a number of serious flaws. Either the balance is basically fucked, there are serious quality control issues, the ingredients chosen are generally of lower quality, or the choice of ingredients might be downright nonsensical. It's usually still edible but I would basically never recommend it.

An abomination beyond salvation. An affront to the gods.

I skipped the in-betweener ½ point scores because I'm lazy. I hope you're smart enough to fill in the blanks.

Tags

You may be wondering what the broken hearts and stopwatches and all the other icons mean. Wonder no more:

Disclosure

Almost none of the photos of burgers on this list were taken by me except in one or two cases where I was not able to find any other images. If a photo was taken by me I always mention it in the review. Other than those few cases I always go with an official image if one is available. Shout-out to Wolt for greatly simplifying this process.

Rest assured that no one is paying, asking for, or otherwise influencing my reviews. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Which is very disappointing, frankly. I've been waiting for years for someone to get in touch so we could work something out. If you are interested, please contact me. My integrity is absolutely for sale if you offer enough.