Burgers are pretty much the best food.
I hate thinking that way. I don’t want there to be a “best food,” I don’t want a “favorite food,” I want any art, any trade, any passion to be a thing that grows and changes, and develops, and tries harder and harder to be better than itself. I love being blown away by a meal, but I don’t want to taste the best version of something, because I want the trajectory of cuisine to be upward.
And that’s why burgers are the best food.
Because there’s no such thing as a perfect burger (well, there’s one, but that’s kind of like giving yourself a nickname, you know?). A burger just needs to work. There’s no best cut of beef, ground a certain way, there’s no ideal cheese, bun, sauce, or any other toppings that make the ideal burger. The parts need to not just add up, but complement and balance each other, and highlight one another’s strengths, and just taste fucking good.
Which is true of any dish, really, but burgers are bigger than that. They’re ubiquitous! A burger is a well-defined thing (usually. You can dissect it, but they tend to fall under the “I know it when I see it” category of well-defined things), and all over town, across various levels of dining and cuisines, you can find some kind of patty on some kind of bread. Everyone gets to contribute to the conversation and put their stamp on their burger.
The best thing about burgers is that they’re hard to fuck up, but even harder to make amazing. So as I set out to eat a bunch of them and talk about them on here, I probably won’t have a bad one, and a few might actually change my life.
Matty Tucker is a Minneapolis-based cook and writer who loves dumplings, tacos, noodles, pickles, and burgers (obviously).
All photos by Matty Tucker, unless otherwise noted.
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