The Burger Restaurant Menu Red Flags To Look Out For

Finding a new burger restaurant to visit can sometimes take a lot of deliberation and thought, especially if you're a big fan of the classic dish. Luckily, there are a few disqualifying factors that many burger joints unfortunately possess that can narrow down your search. One of these red flags is when restaurants feature a strong focus on trendy burgers and ingredients. Whether it's charcoal buns or boujee oils and sauces, trendy ingredients could be a way for restaurants to attract young consumers, but it can also indicate that a restaurant is attempting to overcompensate by providing buzzworthy burgers rather than high-quality ones.

While trendy burgers and ingredients aren't quite as concerning as burger shops that sell sushi out of the same kitchen, they are still not ideal if you're looking for a spot that captures the true greatness of a good old-fashioned burger. In fact, when we had the opportunity to speak to burger experts about the biggest red flags among burger restaurants, overuse of trendy ingredients was a major talking point. "It needs to be taken behind the barn and shot," Culinary Director John Masterson told us about truffle oil, one of the most trendy burger toppings in the world today. "It's overpowering and certainly does not belong on everything. I'm almost at the point where I believe it may not belong on anything."

Now, we will never tell you to stop enjoying dishes you like because they're too trendy or extravagant; if a bacon smashburger with truffle oil on a saffron bun is your idea of burger perfection, more power to you. However, we here at The Takeout believe that burgers are at their best when all the ingredients work together to complement the (ideally high-quality) burger patty itself rather than overwhelming or outshining it. In order to do that, it's typically seen as ideal not to stray too far away from the key aspects of a standard cheeseburger.

This much was echoed by Anthony Bourdain, who always believed that less is more when it came to burgers. Most notably, he once remarked in an interview with Insider Tech, "You have to ask yourself, 'Is this thing I'm doing to this perfectly good, classic dish, is it making it better?' [...] It might deconstruct it in a way that impresses people, delights them, or astounds them, but does it make it better?" So, while there's always room to add an extra ingredient or two to your burger to make it more suited to your tastes, finding an entire menu full of "experimental" burgers may be a sign that the restaurant doesn't fully understand what makes a great burger on a fundamental level.