The burger taste-off

Finally, we have more choices when it comes to burgers other than the ubiquitous McDonald’s and Burger King. Of course, there are plenty of other takeaway places that have burgers on their menu, and let’s not forget chicken burgers at KFC.

However, it’s the rise of specialty burger joints that has grabbed my attention in the last year or so. Burger Culture at the top of Trafalgar St has been around for a number of years and was arguably the start of the specialty burger restaurants in the region. Then there’s places like Burger ‘n’ Beast in Berryfields, RE Burger in Richmond, Anarchy Burgers in Bridge St, the recently opened Marty’s Meats in Bridge St where they specialize in smashburgers that take days to create, along with all the café’s and takeaway places that also make great burgers.

When I was thinking of a subject to this column Karen suggested a burger comparison, so that’s what we did. We bought a similar beef and cheese burger from the above specialty burger places and had a taste-off while also looking at value for money.

Many of these burgers are premium products that come with price tags around the $18-$22 mark. We have made a few burgers at home to help feed the family over summer, so we decided to include a homemade burger in the very unscientific comparison.

We bought all the burgers without telling the burger joint what we were doing, we just bought a burger as you would. No extras, just the cheese burger. The meat patties are around 100gms each in the burgers we bought, some have two patties and some have a larger single patty. They also all tend to be 100% beef with seasoning.

When we make burger patties we like to add flavour, so we start with a 50/50 mix of beef and pork mince then make sure there’s onion, plenty of garlic, sometimes fennel if we have some in the fridge, fresh herbs from the garden and breadcrumbs (we use Fogg Dogg Gluten Free crumbs but you can use any dried bread crumb) to help keep them moist. It’s all about adding flavour and retaining the natural juiciness of the meat.

This is also a great recipe to use for meatballs so if you have burger mix left over just turn it into meatballs the next day and have it with a tomato-based sauce and spaghetti. You can check out our recipe on my Top Tastes website www.toptastes.co.nz

So, we gathered the troops to help with the unscientific tasting and had some fun.

As I have said before there’s a cost to convenience, having someone else make your food for you will always be more expensive because they have to pay rent, pay staff and every other cost that goes with running a business, but if you go to a bit of effort by far the most cost effective is the homemade burger. The ingredients work out at about $5 each or $7 if you want two 100gm patties in your burger.

Here’s what we paid for the burgers we purchased:

McDonald’s Big Mac $8.60

Burger King Double Whopper with Cheese $16.75

RE Burger Icon Double burger $17.90

Burger ‘n Beast Smoky Beast Burger $14.10

Burger Culture Run BMC $20.00

Anarchy Burgers Double Cheese Burger $21.00

Marty’s Meats Smashburger Classic Cheese burger $22.00

And what did the tasting team decide?

Firstly, I need to say the group of tasting participants wouldn’t necessarily choose a cheeseburger off the menu, but to make sure we were comparing similar burgers we chose the cheeseburger to make the comparison as similar as possible between restaurants.

By the time we had bought all the burgers (one driver did the Nelson collection run while another collected those from Richmond) and had them collated in one place, then photographed before we tasted them, they were warm at best. Which isn’t really that unusual when you buy a takeaway burger and have it delivered to your home.

The group had an interesting mix of comments, which you would expect because different people like different things. Some of the more interesting observations were that in most cases the flavour of the sauces was the predominant flavour, rather than the meat that should be the hero ingredient.

In one burger the meat patty was too small for the bun, the meat should come to the edge of the bun. It turns out that the meat-to-bun ratio is important.

If the burger is promoted at being flame grilled then let’s taste the grill, not just the sauces.

By general consensus the three best burgers were from RE Burger in Richmond that we all agreed had the best char flavour, Burger and Beast (ignoring the meat to bun ratio was off but the flavour was great) and Marty’s Meats Smashburger. This one we agreed we would like to try again when it is hot and fresh rather than 45 minutes after it was made.

And I may be biased but my personal favourite was our homemade burger that was packed with flavour, the juicy meat was the hero and it happened to be the most cost effective. Making your own burgers is easy, you can cook them on a barbecue if you’re picnicking or camping, you can load them with your favourite flavours and you can feed 10 people for about $50 if you have one generous meat patty in each burger.

All in all it was a fun evening. Fantastic company, tasty beers, wines and soft drinks to wash the burgers down with and an introduction to some of the new and upcoming passionate burger crafters in the Nelson/Tasman region.

What do we try next?

Published in the Nelson Mail 01.02.2026