Nate C./Yelp
Burgers are so beloved and ubiquitous that they've become the blank canvas of food. Chefs can dress them up any way they want to, and chances are customers will order them, no matter how outlandish the toppings. From massive burgers that can feed a whole restaurant and cost thousands to creative, unusual mashups like sushi burgers, there's a crazy burger out there to satisfy everyone's taste.
The Vortex
Atlanta
The largest burger on the menu at The Vortex, an adults-only, bar-food wonderland, is the Quadruple Coronary Bypass. It's got four patty-melt burgers that act as the buns, plus two more half-pound burger patties, 28 slices of American cheese, 27 slices of bacon, and four fried eggs, plus 20 ounces of fries and tots on the side. You can order it for $80, or try the eating challenge: If you finish it in 30 minutes or less, it's free. For more moderate appetites, you can get it in single, double, and triple versions as well.
Chunky's Burgers & More
San Antonio, Texas
Proclaimed the hottest burger on the planet by the TV show “Man vs. Food,” the 4 Horsemen at Chunky's is not for the faint of heart. It's made with fresh jalapeno and serrano peppers, a habanero sauce, and one of the hottest peppers ever grown, the bhut jolokia, or ghost pepper. You have to sign a waiver to order it due to the spiciness, but if you finish it in 25 minutes or less, it's free.
Related: 31 Belly-Busting Food Challenges That Offer Winners a Free Meal
Datz
Tampa, Florida
Who says a burger bun needs to be made out of bread? At Datz, you can get a burger with beef sandwiched between breaded and deep fried patties of jalapeno-bacon mac and cheese. They're creamy and gooey on the inside, and crisp on the outside. They hold together as you eat the burger surprisingly well, but you may choose to use a fork and knife if you don't like greasy fingers. Either way, this cheeseburger is worth any mess.
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Public School 702
Las Vegas
If you grew up eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, purge that memory from your mind before you think about the PB&J Burger from Public School 702. Unlike the sweet, soggy sandwich from your lunchbox, this burger has a complicated mix of sweet, savory, and spicy flavors. Crunchy peanut butter lends texture, blackberry habanero jam is sweet and hot, and crispy bacon gives it all a backbone of salty smokiness. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.
Related: 18 Things You Didn't Know About Peanut Butter and Jelly
Smorgasburg
Williamsburg, New York
Back in 2013, Keizo Shimamoto invented the ramen burger in New York City. It became an instant hit that went viral on social media with its chewy, crispy bun made of compressed ramen noodles. You can get your hands on one at many restaurants around the world now, but the place where Shimamoto originally sold them is at Smorgasburg, a weekend-only outdoor food fest. Now that the demand for ramen burgers has died down, you won't have to wait in huge lines to get one.
Clinton Station Diner
Clinton, New Jersey
You and nine of your friends can win $2,000 if you finish a burger at Clinton Station Diner. The catch? It's got to be the 8th Wonder burger, a whopping 105-pound monstrosity, and you've got to do it in an hour or less. Luckily, you can just order the 8th Wonder, which includes 50 pounds of beef and takes hours to make, for about $400 without the pressure of the challenge.
26 Beach Restaurant
Los Angeles
Leave it to California to combine sushi and burgers. Though it's the California Roll Burger that originally gained attention for 26 Beach, the Yuki Spicy Tuna Burger takes the mashup of burgers and sushi one step farther by using raw fish. A thick layer of creamy, spicy tuna sits on top of a seared half-pound burger. Pickled ginger, wasabi mayo, cucumber, tomato and a hefty sprinkle of julienned nori complete the sushi flavor profile.
McGuire's Irish Pub
Pensacola, Florida
If you generally order a burger with everything on it, you may want to avoid that phrase at McGuire's Irish Pub. Their Terrible Garbage Burger comes with a little bit of absolutely everything, and the menu even warns that it's "absolutely disgusting." Just some of the stuff piled precariously on that burger: liverwurst, corned beef, pineapple, guacamole, banana peppers, chili, peanut butter, remoulade, wasabi, sauerkraut, marinara, and tons of cheese. The literal cherry on top? Ice cream, hot fudge, and a maraschino cherry. Mmm!
Mallie's Sports Grill & Bar
Southgate, Michigan
A friendly Guinness World Record feud for the largest commercially sold burger resulted in the 1,800 Pound Burger at Mallie's near Detroit — and yes, it's on the restaurant's regular menu. It includes 2,000 pounds of ground beef (it's not as heavy once it's cooked), 300 pounds of cheese and other toppings, and a custom-made 250-pound bun. You can order it for the bargain price of $10,000 and feed an entire town.
Back Door Grill
Steamboat Springs, Colorado
By now, burgers with donut buns, also called Luther burgers, are pretty common. But the Back Door Grill decided that a plain old burger just won't do, so the restaurant went a little crazy with the toppings on the Dirty Harry burger. It's got a beef patty topped with peanut butter, bacon, fried egg, hash browns, and cheddar, all on a glazed donut dusted with powdered sugar. It's like a full breakfast meal, just packed into one sweet, sugar-covered bun.
Related:31 Wild and Wonderful Burger Toppings for Your Next Cookout
Fleur
Las Vegas
The Fleur Burger 5000 is so named because it costs a cool $5,000 in the conspicuous consumption haven of Las Vegas. What makes it so expensive? The quality of the ingredients is over-the-top, including a patty made out of Wagyu beef and toppings of foie gras and shaved black truffles. That would make it an expensive burger on its own, but the real big ticket item is the bottle of 1995 Chateau Petrus wine that comes along with it as the perfect pairing. Is it worth the price? Yes, if you're a billionaire.
Zombie Burger + Shake Lab
West Des Moines, Iowa
Everyone's heard of an Elvis sandwich with peanut butter, banana, and bacon, so it was only a matter of time before all those same ingredients made their way onto a burger. The Undead Elvis at Zombie Burger pushes the Elvis flavor combination into new territory with a smear of melty peanut butter, breaded and deep fried banana slices, American cheese, bacon, mayo, and a fried egg. It's a sweet and salty juxtaposition that makes so many of these burgers work well.
Lucky's Last Chance
Philadelphia
Mashing up one meal with a burger is almost always a great idea. At Lucky's Last Chance, you can get a bunch of burgers with inspired toppings, including the Pk Burger. It's topped with locally made pierogies, a Polish dumpling filled with mashed potatoes, along with caramelized onions and sour cream, two traditional pierogi accompaniments. Plus there's some cheddar melted over the whole thing, because who doesn't want cheese with their burger and dumplings?
River City Cafe
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
Skip the traditional and specialty burger sections of the menu at River City Cafe and head right to the Double Dawg Dare Ya Burgers list, where things get wacky. The Kitchen Sink Burger Platter piles just about as much as possible onto two burger patties: homemade chili, bacon, grilled onions, jalapenos, mushrooms, Swiss, cheddar, lettuce, tomato, pickles, mustard, and mayo. How does that all stay together? With grilled cheese sandwiches in place of buns, of course. Plus fries, slaw, and two of the biggest onion rings you've ever seen. And it's only $16.
Katsu Burger
Seattle
Japanese-style burgers are made with crunchy, deep-fried beef patties, or katsu. At Katsu Burger, you can get a sandwich of epic proportions by ordering the Mt. Fuji. It comes stacked high with a beef patty katsu, chicken katsu, and pork katsu, along with fried egg, bacon, cheddar, pepperjack and American cheeses, wasabi mayo, spicy mayo, and tonkatsu sauce, a barbecue-like sweet and savory drizzle. All that deep-fried panko breading makes this a super crunchy burger.
Doc Crow's
Louisville, Kentucky
The burgers served at smokehouses are always great, not because the burger patty is smoked, but because you can always get a burger topped with smoked meat. At Doc Crow's, you can get the Bubba Burger, which is topped with the house-smoked pulled pork and beef brisket for double the smoked meatiness. There's also a crispy fried green tomato slice, a runny-yolk fried egg, onion rings, and cole slaw. It's all the best parts of a southern barbecue meal on a burger patty.
Kooky Canuck
Memphis, Tennessee
Think you can eat a seven-and-a-half-pound burger? You can give it a try at Kooky Canuck. The Kookamonga is made with a 4-pound ground-beef patty that takes 40 minutes to cook. It's placed on two pounds of a specially-baked bun, and it's got a pound-and-a-half of cheese and veggie toppings. If you finish it yourself in under an hour, you get the $42 burger and fame for free. If you are even crazier — or have a softball team to feed — order the 12- or 25-pound versions of the burger.
Solly's Grille
Milwaukee
Wisconsin is known for their butterburgers, and Solly's has been serving the decadent sandwiches up since 1936. And when the owners say butter, they mean it: a thick slab of soft butter is spread onto the top bun so that it melts over the burger and into a literal pool of butter on the plate. It's like a moat of liquid gold into which customers dip each bite of burger. The two-thirds pound of beef, stewed onions, mushrooms, and three kinds of cheese that make up the Cheesehead Burger will soak up a ton of the good stuff.
Burger & Lobster
New York
Burger & Lobster serves well, burgers and lobster, and that's about it. Sure, you can get a combo plate with a burger and a whole lobster on it, but why not just combine the two into one sandwich? The Beast Burger includes a 10-ounce beef patty topped with fresh lobster meat, Swiss cheese, and a smear of truffle mayo for a little classy, creamy funk. If burgers and lobster are so good separately, then this splurge of a burger must be amazing.
Kuma's Corner
Chicago
Kuma's Corner is well known for having top-notch burgers, including some really crazy limited-time burger specials. But one of the most unique burgers on the regular menu is the Sourvein. Piled high on top of a burger patty are the typical bacon and cheddar, but also deep-fried, blackened chicken tenders, strips of Belgian waffles, maple syrup, and a raspberry aioli. It would be a great take on chicken and waffles even without the burger patty, which just puts the whole thing over the top.
The Cherry Cricket
Denver
Coloradans love green chiles of any kind or in any form, and topping their burgers is no exception. A crispy, deep-fried, panko-crusted poblano pepper tops the 720 Jammin' Poblano Burger at The Cherry Cricket, along with pimento cheese, thick-cut pork belly, and a sweet and fruity cherry pepper and raspberry sauce. The next logical step up from deep fried poblanos would be a whole chile relleno, and don't worry, they have that on a burger too, along with pork green chili.
West Rib Pub & Grill
Talkeetna, Arkansas
While Alaskans love their beef burgers, it's not uncommon to find burgers made with game meats as well. The massive Seward's Folly burger at West Rib Pub & Grill is made with two one-pound patties of ground caribou meat. Those are stacked with a half pound of smoked ham, a dozen strips of bacon, and Swiss and American cheeses. It comes with a pound of fries too, just in case your $65 burger failed to fill you up.