Burgers, Burgers, Everywhere

If I’d heard it once, I’d heard it a thousand times. “Burger Bar serves the best burgers in Amsterdam”.

Never being one to shy away from a challenge like that, I vowed to track it down. Which wasn’t difficult because there are three locations of the chain in the city (one, ironically, located a couple of doors down from a Burger King). After all of the delicious gourmet burgers I ate in New Zealand at places like BurgerFuel and FergBurger, I wondered whether it could compare. I’m happy to say that it did, although those New Zealanders still are the reigning champs, in my opinion. Anyway, on to the burgers.

Scott ordered a 270g Irish beef burger topped with cheese, bacon and fried onions (you can choose any variety and number of toppings you like on your burger) and I had the chicken burger with cheese, bacon and avocado. We both also ordered a portion of chips with a garlic mayonnaise.

If there’s one thing I hate about gourmet burger bars, it’s that they treat avocado as an expensive commodity. In this case, I had one smearing of avocado on my bun for the princely sum of €1.15, where in the supermarket (which itself can be overpriced on veggies) I can get a whole avocado for 90cents. You do the math. Rant over.

The burgers were very tasty and had plenty of toppings, as well as a really generous portion of fries. I loved that the “fries” were more like English chips; thicker and crispier, and the garlic mayo was also delicious.

My only criticism would be that there was a little too much burger sauce on the buns, which made all of the toppings slide out of the bun every time you took a bite (and left your hands covered in delicious goo), but that didn’t detract from the wonderful taste.

There’s a reason that this place is so popular, and grew from one branch to three over the past few years. No only does it offer some of the tastiest burgers with the biggest amount of toppings in the city (and is always full of locals), but they also offer a good variety of beef (Irish, Kobe and Black Angus), wholemeal buns (which I’ll try next time I pay them a visit) and a monthly special topping which the customers can vote for (this month’s was goose liver).