50 Burgers Worth Traveling For

Our love for burgers spans both decades and continents.

It started when we were kids eating at American fast food chains. Back then, we empathised with both the Hamburglar and Wimpy – fictional characters with poor behavior patterns and questionable eating habits. After all, both of them loved hamburgers as much, if not more, than we did.

We honed this love at fast food restaurants like McDonalds and Burger King. Back then, Daryl especially liked eating burgers at permanently closed Gino’s Hamburgers in Philadelphia while Mindi was partial to the burgers and frosted orange shakes at The Varsity in Atlanta.

Our shared burger passion didn’t abate when we became adults. Instead, we proceeded to eat burgers in more cities and countries when we traveled in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America.

This tasty journey is far from over.

We don’t just eat hamburgers when we travel. Check out our picks for the best cinnamon buns, donuts, hot dogs, noodle dishes, sandwiches, salads, soups and desserts around the world. Then check out our tasty burger bowl recipe.

We agree with the late Anthony Bourdain who succinctly stated that “a hamburger is perfection wrapped up in a bun.” This simple sentiment explains our endless quest to eat amazing burgers almost everywhere we travel.

Sometimes we order cheeseburgers and occasionally go cheese-free. We don’t always agree on condiments – Mindi has passions for both ketchup and hot sauce while Daryl chooses to let the best burgers stand on their own meaty merits (though, let it be noted that he loves exotic cheeses like Roquefort, Comté and Alsatian Münster). However, we’re always happy to share an order of fries and discuss life as we analyze the deliciousness of our meal.

After eating a world full of burgers, these are our favorites and the ones we’d happily eat again and again:

New York City has so many great burger spots which is why locals can’t agree on which NYC burgers are best. The dry-aged tavern burger at Red Hook Tavern is our personal favorite.

Open since 2019, Red Hook Tavern is one of New York City’s great gastropubs with a bustling saloon vibe and a menu filled with elevated pub dishes including one of best wedge salads we’ve ever eaten. Billy Durney first achieved fame for smoked meat and now his burger is in the spotlight.

Thick and juicy, Durney’s dry-aged patties are perfectly cooked to a mid-rare pink before they’re simply adorned with American cheese and raw white onion slices. Crinkly potato rounds are a welcome addition that complete the dish.

Eating at JG Melon, which has been serving its legendary burgers for over half a century, has its quirks. Diners usually have to wait in a queue and the Upper East Side neighborhood saloon doesn’t take credit cards. However, those first world hardships are forgotten as soon as simple yet enormous burgers and cottage fries hit the table.

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We can’t say that we believe that Lassen invented the hamburger. We also can’t say that we adored our Louis’ Lunch burger which was essentially a large patty grilled in an antique flame broiling machine, served between toasted white bread and garnished with cheese and a choice of tomato or onion or, in our case, both. But the experience of eating burgers at Louis’ Lunch was fun which counts for a lot.

Discover great pizza in New Haven, the actual reason for our visit.

Hamburg is another contender for the place where burgers were invented since food historians trace the practice of cooking ground beef to Hamburg dockworkers who ate ground beef patties called frikadellen in the 19th century.

Despite the city’s name, we don’t buy into this origin story either. Our scepticism didn’t stop us from chowing down on ginormous burgers at The Bird mere hours after arriving in Hamburg during our first visit. It also didn’t stop us from returning to the American-style Hamburg hamburger joint during a subsequent visit.

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Located on the edge of the French Quarter, Port of Call has been slinging out top-quality burgers and baked potatoes for years. Open since the 1960s, the burger joint handily competes with spots serving fried chicken and other traditional New Orleans dishes.

Port of Call’s burgers are serious business – each starting out with a half pound of ground beef – and come with a big baked potato. We spent a few extra bucks to get cheese and mushrooms added. The unmelted cheese and wine-sautéed mushrooms melded together to create a unique burger experience.

Discover more great cheap eats in New Orleans.

The UK doesn’t have a stellar burger reputation due to the country’s mad cow disease outbreak in the early 1990s. However, in case you missed the memo, that was three decades ago and it’s more than safe to eat burgers in England especially if you eat one at a pub like The Plimsoll.

Located in North London, the Plimsoll can be a bit of a schlep depending on where you’re staying. However, if you like to eat tasty cheeseburgers served without healthy things like lettuce, this pub’s Dexter cheeseburger is worth the effort. This is especially true if you appreciate old school pubs and grandma china.

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Klaus Wittrup channeled his passion for American burgers when he opened the original Gasoline Grill in 2016 in a gas station. Though it was far from the first burger joint in Copenhagen, it was probably the first to make burgers with freshly ground meat. It was also the first to serve them inside Martin’s style potato rolls. It was definitely the first to serve them with gasoline sauce, a flavorful condiment that reminded us of 1000 island dressing, at a gas station.

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Chicago is another American city with a plethora of restaurants vying for best burger. Many people give that honor to Au Cheval (see below). We did the same until our most recent trip to Chicago when we discovered our new favorite Chicago burger at The Loyalist.

Located below its sister restaurant Smyth, which happens to have three Michelin stars, this West Loop gastropub buzzes with energy and pumps out a lot of burgers plus a range of classic French bistro fare. We shared a Loyalist OG Cheeseburger during our visit plus a seasonal tomato salad and black truffle deviled eggs.

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Eating burgers in Vietnam may sound strange. After all, burgers aren’t exactly a Vietnamese food favorite. But burgers are wildly popular with expats in Vietnamese cities like Da Nang. However, it’s not just expats who love eating burgers at Burger Bros. Korean tourists are huge fans of this particular burger stand. Rumor has it that a Korean celebrity ate here and posted photos of his meal. This brought inevitable crowds of Koreans clamoring for burgers.

Opened by a Japanese surfer in 2015 and with the mantra no burger, no life, Burger Bros. serves excellent cheeseburgers as well as chili burgers, chicken burgers, pork burgers, fish burgers and veggie burgers. Once we got over our doubts about eating burgers in Vietnam, Burger Bros. quickly became our favorite Da Nang burger joint. As a bonus, the fries are great too.

Discover more great restaurants in Da Nang.

Hamburger America looks like a novelty luncheonette but that’s far from the case. Hamburger aficionado George Motz opened the Soho burger joint after achieving multimedia fame with books, a documentary and a Travel Channel show.

We ate a few burgers at the old fashioned counter during our lunchtime visit. And, while the classic smashburger and Chester patty melt were both excellent, it was Motz’s Oklahoma-style fried onion burger that stood out from the pack. It’s a meaty masterpiece of ground chuck, melty American cheese and gooey caramelized onion.

We embraced the Asian burger theme when we ate at Fukuburger in Las Vegas. Originally a food truck when owner Colin Fukunaga started the business, the off-strip burger joint takes pride in serving all-American burgers with a Japanese twist. While our burger was topped with wasabi mayo, Fuku sauce, American cheese and veggies, other potential toppings included fried eggs, crispy onion strings, pickled red ginger and shitake mushrooms at the time of our visit.

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Minetta Tavern is a top NYC restaurant that dates back to 1937. Originally a West Village hangout for some of the city’s most noteable writers, the historic restaurant lost its luster over the years. Things changed in 2009 when restauranteur Keith McNally took it over and transformed the tavern into a modern American bistro with French accents. Today, Minetta Tavern is one of the city’s most difficult reservations. It also serves two of the city’s best burgers.

While its Minetta Burger topped with cheddar cheese and caramelized onions is no slouch, the restaurant’s Black Label Burger is the standout thanks to its melange of prime dry aged beef cuts. Both burgers are premium priced and come with fries on the side.

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Sure, we could have eaten a standard burger at Diner St. Saveur but that would have been a shame. Instead, we shared a ginormous DINER Burger stuffed with two juicy beef patties, homemade mayo, tomato, lettuce, pickles, grilled cheese curds, American cheese, bacon and fried onion.

We could have also paired that whopper of a sandwich with fries but that would have been another shame considering that Quebec is where poutine was invented. The Fungitown poutine we ordered came topped wild mushrooms, fresh herbs and garlic sauce.

We could have also changed the brioche bread to waffles for a small surcharge. However, even we have our limits.

Discover more great food in Quebec.

Angelenos have been eating cheeseburgers ever since 1924 when Lionel Sternberger added a slice of American cheese to a burger while working at a Pasadena roadside burger stand. While crediting Sternberger with inventing the cheeseburger is debatable, there’s no debate that eating a cheeseburger in Los Angeles is a must for carnivores.

We accomplished this carnivorous food goal by eating a double cheeseburger at Irv’s Burgers on La Brea Avenue. A local favorite since Irv’s opened its original roadside stand on Route 66, it came topped with lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle, special sauce and good old American cheese.

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Sometimes we get smart and sometimes we get lucky. The latter happened when we stopped for lunch at the Phoenicia Diner on a day when the popular Catskills eatery was featuring a burger topped with pimento cheese. Eating a burger from the regular menu would have been the opposite of a hardship. But, since this special burger combo was as tasty as it was unique, it was our luckiest day in the Hudson Valley.

Phoenicia Diner’s owners had their lucky day when Ben Stiller first filmed an episode of the Apple TV show Severance in the diner. Although its name is changed to Pip’s Bar & Grille when it appears on the show, the diner’s true identity is impossible to miss.

Discover more great foodie finds in the Catskills.

Dallas Burger Joint gets our approval with its compact menu that features ‘the city’s juiciest grass fed burgers’, crispy fries and craft beer. The popular burger joint serves those burgers every day of the week at multiple Lisbon locations, including one on Pink Street near the Time Out Market, plus a location in nearby Carcavelos.

We’re partial to Dallas’s classic cheeseburgers made with 100% grass fed beef, cheddar cheese, lettuce, chopped onions, pickles and special sauce. There are other burgers on the menu but this is the one we can’t resist.

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Earnestine & Hazel‘s history precedes its 1992 opening. This dive bar has a storied past that includes stints as a pharmacy, brothel and night club. Not only did musical luminaries including Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, Sam Cook, Bo Diddley, Aretha Franklin, B.B. King and Tina Turner pass through the front doors during one of the bar’s prior lives, but ghosts apparently haunt the building to this day.

Open until 3am, this dive bar has just two items on its food menu – Soul Burgers and Double Soul Burgers. Keeping it simple, both hamburgers come with exactly six ingredients – bun, patty (or patties), fried onions, cheese, pickles and signature ‘soul’ sauce. There’s actually a third item since each burger is served with a bag of Golden Flake potato chips.

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As culinary multitaskers, we were delighted to take a hot burger break at Chez Tousignant near Montreal’s Marché Jean-Talon during an ice cold December day. Open since 2015, the local burger joint grinds its meat and serves its classic burgers on house-made buns.

To be clear, we didn’t just order a classic burger. We ordered the signature Tousignant burger which was topped with the usual burger accoutrements plus cheese and house-cured maple ham. It was a good move.

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Daryl has a passion for Shake Shack that rivals Mindi’s hot sauce passion. The American fast food chain was founded by New York restaurateur Danny Meyer and is operated by the Union Square Hospitality Group.

Although he likes Shake Shack’s standard ShackBurger with its angus beef blend patty, melted cheese and special sauce, Daryl is partial to the SmokeShack. This flavorful burger is topped with applewood-smoked bacon, chopped cherry peppers and special sauce.

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Carnivorous travelers who visit Prague will want to eat tartare, sausage and the occasional hamburger most if not every day during their trip. For them (i.e. us), eating at Kantýna is an absolute must.

Kantýna is a butchery, a pub, a palace, a gathering place and just about everything that epitomizes today’s Prague. Most important – its butchery sells and serves some of the city’s best burgers. Charred on the outside yet cooked rare, our beef patties looked undercooked but somehow tasted nicely done.

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Husk is a shining star for new southern cuisine. Keen to eat at Husk in Nashville after eating dinner at the original Husk in Charleston, we made a point to eat brunch at the Rutledge Hill restaurant in downtown Nashville.

Eating that brunch with friends provided the opportunity to eat a variety of dishes including pancakes, deviled eggs and grits with shrimp. And a hamburger. Of course, we ate a hamburger too and it didn’t disappoint.

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What makes a burger African? Is it the meat? Sure. Is it the location? Yes, that too. Our burgers at The Dog’s Bollocks at YARD accomplished both of these criteria since we ate them in Cape Town

Located near our apartment in the same space as one of our favorite Cape Town coffee shops, the YARD served us tacos during the day and burgers at night. Between the two, we preferred the massive burgers generously topped with cheese and various sauces.

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Finland’s first Top Chef winner, Akseli Herlevi, opened Naughty BRGR in 2015. Fast forward to the present and there are now more than ten Naughty BRGR’s in the country.

While we appreciate that Herlevi offers meat-free burger options, we kept things naughty by ordering a signature Naughty Burger during our visit. Made with Finish beef, cheddar cheese, French blue cheese, bacon, jam, arugula and aioli, it was a dinner winner.

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Ann Arbor’s Zingerman’s is one of the most famous delis in the country for many reasons but especially for its sandwiches and bread. Meanwhile, Zingerman’s Roadhouse, the deli’s sister restaurant, specializes in American food favorites like Mac-n-Cheese, BBQ and burgers. With that in mind, we couldn’t resist ordering a Roadhouse Burger served on a brioche bun during our meal at Zingerman’s Roadhouse.

That burger didn’t disappoint thanks to its pasture-raised, dry-aged beef and accompanying hand-cut, twice cooked fries. However, adding applewood smoked bacon to the mix elevated it to the next level.

Similar to The Loyalist (see above), Fransechetta58 has ties to a three-star Michelin restaurant – Osteria Francescana. Its small Emilia burger is a seemingly simple slider made with chianina meat and cotechino along with Parmigiano-Reggiano, the king of cheese.

Don’t be fooled by the Emilia’s small size. With toppings like salsa verde and balsamic mayo, it’s a rich, meaty morsel that packs a potent umami punch.

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Bunsen raised the Dublin burger bar when it opened its first burger joint in 2016 despite the fact that its menu is so small enough to fit on the back of a business card. The only options on that menu are four burgers (hamburger, double hamburger, cheeseburger and double cheeseburger), three types of fries (hand cut, shoestring and sweet potato) and two drinks (soda and milkshakes).

This is the place to go to in Dublin for a big, sloppy burger. Go crazy and make it a double and add cheese. You know you want to go big, so just do it. We did it without any regrets. Not even one.

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Not every burger we eat is made with beef. Other options include plant-based products, chicken, pork and even veal. Our tasty burger at Columbus’s The Guild House used yet another protein – lamb. The perfectly cooked lamb burger was colorfully topped with feta, arugula, pickled shallots and roasted peppers.

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Eating in Tallinn’s Telliskivi neighborhood has its perks. Not only does Telliskivi has a cool hipster vibe and a plethora of architecturally interesting buildings, but it’s also home to one of the city’s most popular restaurants – F-Hoone.

In addition to dishes dishes like Estonian borscht, F-Hoone serves a whopper of a burger that they choose to call a furger. However, unlike the American whopper, this burger (or should we say furger?) features a stuffed Aberdeen Angus beef patty, cheddar cheese, red cabbage, tomato, Sriracha aioli and roasted onions inside a dark bread bun.

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Pop’s Place isn’t the only hamburger joint we taste tested in Ljubljana but it quickly became our favorite for an unexpected reason. Sure, we liked our Original California Classic burger with its custom beef blend, secret sauce, aged cheddar cheers and garnishes. That’s a given.

It was the beer menu that catapulted Pop’s Place to the top of our Ljubljana burger list. Finding Tallinn’s Põhjala beer was a true treat – it’s one of our favorites.

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We didn’t let rain put a damper on our burger quest in Walla Walla. Instead, we drove to The Ice-Burg Drive In, a local favorite since 1952, and ordered a Gersch Burger which we proceeded to devour in our car.

Sure, we could have ordered a traditional burger instead or even a double or triple burger and been happy with toppings like relish, mayo, pickles, lettuce, onions and tomatoes. Instead, we added those same toppings to a Gersch Burger which was essentially a loaded patty melt.

Drinking excellent champagne in Reims is a given since the French city is smack dab in the heart of the country’s famous Champagne region. However, the opportunity to pair champagne with burgers was an unexpected treat during our dinner at Sacré Burger.

Considering that Victor Allier owns both Sacré Burger in Reims and Sacré Bistro in nearby Épernay, the confluence makes sense. It also makes us happy.

We first discovered Belfast’s General Merchants in our quest for the city’s best coffee. Little did we realize that we’d also satisfy our burger quest at the same cafe.

It was a true win-win situation to drink excellent flat whites while eating a great burger. Or, on the flip side, one could say that our our cheeseburger came with coffee benefits.

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Eating a great burger wasn’t on our Chiang Mai to-do list since we were fully focused on eating khao soi and other Thai food favorites. And, yet, that’s exactly what we ate when we wandered into Beast Burger in Chiang Mai’s expat-friendly Nimman neighborhood.

The double cheeseburger we ordered, along with crinkle cut fries, came loaded with two beef patties, cheddar cheese, caramelized onions, grilled bacon strips and tangy Beast sauce. Originally a food truck when it opened in 2014, Beast Burger is now a fully realized burger joint that easily earned a spot on this list.

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You might be surprised to see two different Prague hamburgers on this guide but you shouldn’t be for two reasons. First, as previously noted, Prague’s commitment to meat is extreme. And, second, both of Prague’s best burgers are prepared by restaurants that are part of Prague’s prolific Ambiente restaurant group.

The burger we ate at Ambiente’s butcher shop, Naše Maso, was fantastic. Although it looked almost blue, our medium rare burger didn’t taste raw. Judging by a similar, super red burger at sister restaurant Kantýna (see above), this may be how the Czechs like their burgers. We’re all for it. Both burgers were shockingly good.

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France’s Normandy is famous for several foods including audouilette, camembert cheese, pressed duck and tripe à la mode. The hamburger isn’t one of one of those famous foods. And, yet, the perfectly cooked cheeseburger we ate in the shadow of Church of Saint-Pierre at Caen’s Boeuf & Cow was one of the best things we ate during our exploration of the food-focused French region.

Though the restaurant officially calls it a Beef & Cow burger, we prefer to call it a Normandy burger. After all, it’s made with locally sourced minced Norman meat and served with homemade fries. Our name would make even more sense if the burger were topped with camembert instead of cheddar.

Copenhagen isn’t the only European city with more than one great burger joint. What makes Copenhagen unique is that one, POPL Burger, is both owned and influenced by the team behind Noma.

The Noma influences include commitments to both culinary excellence and fermentation. Case in point – our tasty cheeseburgers were glazed with beef garum made in the Noma Fermentation lab. Think fish sauce but made with beef. Yum!

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Established in 1817, The Ear Inn has many stories to tell. Some of those stories involve its status as the city’s oldest drinking establishment while others involve its historic 18th century building, its quirky sign and its auspicious former residents. It’s also home to some of the city’s best burgers.

We’re fans of The Ear Inn’s Pat La Frieda Burger which is made with eight ounces of meat from the vaunted NY area meat purveyor and served with both salad and home fries. However, we appreciate that others may prefer The Ear Inn’s Lamb Burger or its Veggie Burger. In other words, we’ll do us and you do you.

As America’s first UNESCO City of Gastronomy in 2015, Tucson is a city with a deep food culture that spans the gamut from cheap eats to fine dining. It’s also a city that knows how to make burgers. We ate at great one at The Cup Cafe inside the historic Hotel Congress

Called the Real Thing, that burger came with 1/2 pound beef chuck patty, butter lettuce, tomato, onion, dill pickle and a potato bun. Adding cheddar cheese and bacon was an easy decision that we didn’t regret.

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We didn’t expect to eat an artisan burger in pizza’s homeland but we couldn’t resist the Diabolico burger at 50 Panino di Ciro Salvo, a Napoli restaurant helmed by one of the city’s top pizzaiolos. Going further, we also ordered a Mortadella Crunch sandwich plus two bottles of local craft beer.

That pizzaiolo, Ciro Salvo, didn’t mess around when he created the Diabolico burger recipe where a 180-gram (approximately six-ounce) angus patty is topped with emmental cheese, sweet red potatoes and ‘nduja mayo. We look forward to trying more of his burger creations when we return to Naples.

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We literally drove into Boise with the goal of eating burgers at the Westside Drive In during a cross country road trip – yes, we’re that obsessed. It would have been a shame had the burgers been disappointing but that wasn’t the case. They were exactly what we expected to eat at a Boise drive in restaurant.

We had a second goal which was to eat potatoes during our short time in Idaho. We satisfied that goal at Westside Drive In too. However, loaded with sour cream, bacon, cheddar and chives, one Super Spud was big enough to share.

Hoards of customers flock to PNY every day to eat solid burgers at the popular Paris chain. What they get is more of a hybrid – something in between a thicker smashed patty and a super thick pub-style burger.

We’re fans of PNY’s Return of the Cowboy, a burger loaded with bacon, English cheddar and “beignet d’oignon” which sounds so much classier than onion ring which is what is is. We consider it to be a solid upscale interpretation of a Wendy’s baconator and we’re okay with that.

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We were super impressed by the bacon cheeseburgers we ate at Au Cheval in 2014. Those double burgers, each topped with cheese, bacon slabs and a fried egg, impressed us so much that we returned for a repeat performance eight years later. Hungry for more, we repeated the experience yet again at 4 Charles Prime Rib in NYC.

It would be strange that the two burgers are so similar except that they’re both part of the same restaurant group, Hogsalt. If you’re a TikTok fan, then you already know about 4 Charles Prime Rib and how difficult it is to score a reservation at the Greenwich Village restaurant. When and if you eat there, make sure you order a burger with all the fixings. Their gussied up version of the Au Cheval classic is definitely the way to go.

Eating a hamburger in China wasn’t something that we expected to do. However, we couldn’t resist eating one in Shanghai at our hotel restaurant as a break from eating soup dumplings and other local dishes.

Big and juicy, that hamburger took second fiddle to the real star of the plate – the ketchup. Not always available in Asia, Heinz ketchup is the ideal hamburger condiment and tastes like home. (As noted above, Mindi is a huge condiment fan.)

Discover more about our stay at the Swissotel Grand Shanghai.

We were pleased to find and eat American-stye hamburgers and hot dogs during our first cruise with Holland America. After much taste testing at the ship’s Dive-In bar, our favorite burger was the Cannonball – a 1/3 pound beef patty cooked to order and paired with Gouda cheese, applewood smoked bacon, caramelized onions, chop-chop salad, sliced tomato and Dive-In sauce in a toasted brioche roll.

Discover everything we ate during our Holland America cruises in Asia and Norway.

We could be snooty and pretend that we’re too discerning to eat a McDonald’s Big Mac every now and again. But the truth is that we sometimes eat the world’s most famous hamburger when we’re traveling and in need of a quick bite. The same goes for the mega-chain’s addictively delicious french fries.

To those who question the worldwide pertinence of Mickey D’s double burgered classic, bear in mind that some people gage the value of particular currency by the cost of a Big Mac. It’s that iconic.

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