To prepare you for National Burger Month this May, I gleefully took one for the team and ordered burgers from three places around Syracuse to see which tasted best.

So, here’s what I found:

The Hops Spot

I chose their Classic Burger, which was the highest-rated burger on Grubhub at the time I ordered. This burger contained New York cheddar, lettuce, tomato, onions and a smear of their beer mustard. The meat is a blend of chuck and brisket from local, grass-fed cows, according to the restaurant. This burger is $12.29 and came with a side of either salad or fries, so of course I chose fries.

The burger did not taste as great as I hoped. After a few bites, I soon discovered that the burger was somewhat bland. The meat was good, but I could not taste the smear of mustard at all. I even looked inside to see if it was there — and if it was, then it pretty much did nothing for the overall taste. The rest of the ingredients didn’t add much flavor either.

In the end, I just added ketchup and ate the rest, which still tasted pretty good—but I am not sure it was worth the price. It was just a regular burger you could get anywhere but instead cost at least five dollars more. Due to the establishment’s reviews, I believe that this may have been a fluke or that their other burgers just taste better. As a side note, the fries were the second best out of all that I tried.

The Burger Bar by Wegmans

Although not exactly a restaurant, Wegmans is an institution popular among Syracuse locals and students alike, so I believe it deserves to be recognized. I looked at their top-rated items and decided to change it up, so I ordered the Maple Onion Bacon Burger. It contains beef, aged cheddar, smoky bacon, maple onion jam, chipotle aioli and toasted brioche. Once again with a side of fries or salad. All for $13.

From the very first bite, I could tell that this burger was amazing. It had such a unique combination of flavors from the smoky bacon to the sweet maple onion jam. In addition, the bun was also very tasty. If I had to have a complaint, it might be that for the price, the patty was a little small.

Overall, this was definitely my favorite burger that I tried. Such an amazing mix of flavors makes it extremely unique. In addition, the Tuscan Fries that came along with the burger were by far my favorite fries that I tried while conducting this important research.

Limp Lizard BBQ

This time I changed things up a little, as I didn’t want to have another bacon burger, so instead I chose a different burger from the menu. For $12.99, I ordered the Hog and Heifer Burger which consists of beef, lettuce and tomato all mounted with their signature pulled pork. In addition, you get two sides, so I got fries and unfortunately was too full to eat the other side of black bean salad. (Health is not the goal of this experiment.)

This was by far the largest burger I had, even without the addition of pulled pork, so that was a plus. It tasted really good and was much messier than the other two. The pulled pork was amazing and the rest of the burger was pretty good as well. It was my second favorite burger I tried and I believe it was worthy of that title.

This burger definitely had the best value as you get two sides and a delicious burger all for under $13. It tastes delicious and you get a ton of meat with this burger. The only real complaint: the fries were soggy and tasted worse than the others I tried.

Honorable Mentions

Although extremely overpriced and not local at all, The Cheesecake Factory makes really good burgers. I have tried a few of them and I think they match up to almost any burger you can find.

Also, Five Guys. Once again not local at all, but they are pretty cheap and still taste really good.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to run about 30 miles.

Published on April 29, 2019 at 10:01 pm