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Burger Joint

Burger Joint debuted in 2002 behind a curtain in the lobby of the glamorous Thompson Central Park Hotel, back when it was called the Parker Meridien. The restaurant features thick, juicy burgers, and ordering one with “the works” gets you lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, mayonnaise, mustard, and ketchup. Other toppings, like chili crisp, ranch dressing, and sauteed mushrooms, can be added at a cost. Burger Joint has off-shoot locations in Penn Station and at Industry City.

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119 W 56th St (btwn 6th & 7th Ave), New York, NY 10019

(212) 708-7414

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F. Ottomanelli

Where better to go to get the freshest ground beef imaginable than a respected meat market? And what if that meat market also cooked it into a juicy burger for you? Enter F. Ottomanelli in Woodside (unrelated to Ottomanelii’s in the Village). The double-patty cheeseburger is cooked to order and topped with fresh lettuce and tomatoes and placed on a seeded bun with Otto sauce, and there’s no better burger in Queens.

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60-15 Woodside Avenue, Queens, NY 11377

(718) 269-6260

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Smacking Burger

Inside the Mobil gas station, this may be the first filling station burger the city has yet seen. Available in four configurations, it’s a smash burger made with good beef and smashed a little less than most, making it tolerably juicy. And sitting at a picnic table in view of the gas pumps in a unique experience in New York burgerdom. Fries are good, too.

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63 8th Avenue, New York, New York 10014

(212) 989-3555

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Little Uluh

Little Uluh is an offshoot of Uluh in the East Village, a serious Sichuan spot. Its little sibling is far more frivolous, fronted by a bubble tea parlor and offering luncheon dishes that include pastas and souffles, but the burger is the thing to get, a third-pound patty cooked medium loaded down with caramelized onions and sauteed mushrooms and slathered with a mayo-based sauce, making it one of the gloppiest burgers in town.

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218 East 14th Street, New York, New York 10003

(646) 484-5931

Jubilee Marketplace

One of the most buzzed-about burgers of the season is sold from the ground-floor cafeteria of a Greenpoint grocery store. Jubilee Market sells a small, satisfying burger for less than it costs to ride the subway — $2.15 for one, or $2.55 with cheese. The budget burgers are influenced by New Jersey’s legendary restaurant, White Mana. Like White Mana, they have shaved onions and a compact bun. Unlike White Mana, they’re made with local beef butchered in the building and a hunk of slow-cooked garlic in the middle of the patty.

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145 West Street, Brooklyn, New York 11222

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Washington Square Diner

At what point can you call a burger a sandwich? This so-called hamburger club sandwich stands at the frontier. The meat and bacon, two-story, on-toasted-bread configuration characterize it as a true sandwich, but the presence of the regular burger patty and melted cheese means it’s a cheeseburger. Whatever your opinion on the subject, this thing tastes great and it’s fun to have found it in an old-fashioned diner.

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150 W 4th St (at 6th Ave), New York, NY 10012

(212) 533-9306

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Hamburger America

This place can’t decide if it wants to be an old-fashioned lunch counter straight out of the last century, or a hamburger museum. Either way, hamburger historian George Motz might just be behind the yellow Formica counter flipping and smashing your burgers. And don’t miss the Chester, a hamburger and cheese mounted on two pieces of toast, like something from the pre-bun era.

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51 Macdougal Street, New York, New York 10012

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Gotham Burger Social Club

Gotham Burger Social Club is different from other smash burgers. Instead of leaning into simplicity — cheese, patty, bun — it heaps on mustard, ketchup, burger sauce, pickles, jalapenos, and griddled onions, too, for one of the best burgers in town. One other way it’s different: You can order one with an old-school egg cream or a side of fried pickles. This storefront opened on the Lower East Side at the start of the year; before that, owner Mike Puma ran Gotham Burger Social Club at pop-ups across town.

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131 Essex Street, New York, New York 10002

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Halal Diner

This distinctive red frame structure sandwiched between Briarwood and Jamaica Hills serves Bangladeshi, Indian, Afghan, and American food, and everything we’ve tried has been worth ordering. The lamb burger is particularly thick and juicy — no smash burgers here — and it’s cooked to a perfect medium, still pink in the middle. The fries are good, too.

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8447 Parsons Blvd, Jamaica, NY 11432

(718) 674-6969

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Delmonico’s

Yes, this is one of the city’s oldest restaurants and it may have been the first restaurant in town to serve a hamburger in the 1870s. But more important, the hamburger, made from wagyu — available at lunch in the dining room and all the time in the barroom — is splendid, with the bacon and a sort of cheese fondue poured over the top. The fries are also excellent.

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56 Beaver St (at William St), New York, NY 10004

(212) 509-1144

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Rolo’s

When a burger approaches $20, without fries, it’s held to a different standard: We expect better beef, a cheese that holds its own, and maybe a spoonful of jammy, caramelized onions to tie things together. Rolo’s in Ridgewood hits all the marks with its double cheeseburger, throwing a pickled hot pepper on the side like it’s an old-school Italian sandwich shop. It’s rich and meaty, the kind of sandwich you won’t want to share but will be glad you did.

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853 Onderdonk Ave, Queens, NY 11385

(718) 417-6567

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two8two Bar & Burger

This might be any ordinary neighborhood bar, you know, the kind where you watch sports on weekend afternoons as you nibble nachos. But no, it concentrates almost exclusively on thick juicy burgers in a number of sometimes surprising configurations. There’s a Hatch burger, a breakfast burger, and — perhaps best of all — a half-and-half burger that mixes beef and bacon in the patty in exactly that proportion. A nifty idea, and the bacon doesn’t shoot out of the bun, as in the usual bacon burger.

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282 Atlantic Ave (at Smith St), Brooklyn, NY 11201

(718) 596-2282

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Gus’s Chop House

The burger at Gus’s is best when shared. The rich patty is made from a blend of pork, chuck, and dry-aged beef, then topped with raw and caramelized onions, aged cheddar, and cornichons. The burger is off-menu, and a limited number are available each night.

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215 Union St, Brooklyn, NY 11231

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