Threepeat! Home Plate Makes it Three in a Row with 2014 Burger Cup Win

Michael Wester | Sep 28, 2014 9:30 pm | 8 comments | 4223 reads

Home Plate Bar-B-Que has been once again crowned champion of Beijing's burger circuit, walking away with the Burger Cup for a third consecutive year since taking the title from 2011 winner Blue Frog.

Home Plate survived a challenge in the final head-to-head match from upstart Slow Boat Brewery, whose burgers did not even make the Round of 64 in 2013 but has shown some real mettle on the back of their innovatively gluttonous Fryburger, a burger stuffed with beer-battered French fries.

It's been a long ride for Home Plate, which once again made its way into the finals via hard-fought victories over bracketmates Domain (#16), Burgers & Beer (#9), Temple Bar (#4) and Union Bar and Grille (#3), before going on to meet and defeat Bracket A's top seed Great Leap Brewing and then besting Slow Boat.

Home Plate fans consistently praised the juiciness of their burgers as well as the value and the atmosphere of its two locations, the original behind the Hilton Hotel and its more recent venue in Sanlitun.

In the Third Place Match, Great Leap bounded by The Big Smoke to take slot #3 on the strength of its burgers, craft beer and atmosphere.

And with this, we now have our conclusionary rankings in the 2014 Cup, and you just may want to use the October 1 holiday to work off those extra pounds, as a full 68 percent of you reported eating more burgers than usual over the Burger Cup period, while 55 percent said you've consumed more beer.

As we wrap up, let's take a look back at a tumultuous year in the rankings, with new entrants in the Top 10, others taking steep falls and a new fleet of contenders making the rankings.

Biggest Jumps: Stuff'd rose 24 spots, from #38 to #14; Temple Bar rose 23 spots to move from #36 to #13; The Cut jumped 14 spots to go from #44 to #30; The Big Smoke climbed 13 spots to make it to #4 from its previous perch at #17; Paddy O'Shea's went from #31 to 19; 4corners jumped from #22 to 11; and Pentalounge moved up 8 spots from #55 to #47.

Welcome to the Jungle: Slow Boat tops the list of contestants that didn't make the cut in last year's tourney to place in this year's, coming in at #2. Others that made their debut this year include #17 Katchup; #20 Burger Bar; #22 Q Mex; #23 Beer Mania; #25 Morton's of Chicago; #27 Windy City; #28 The Irish Volunteer and #31 The Kro's Nest.

Biggest Drops: It wasn't a great cup for several venues who saw their rankings drop as competition heated up. Cafe Flatwhite dropped 33 slots from #16 last year to #49 this year; Chef Too plummeted 25 spaces to go from #12 to #37; Peter's Tex-Mex dropped from #23 to #44; Grandma's Kitchen went from #19 to 39; and The Bookworm went from #42 to barely making the grade at #62.

Farewell: After charting in 2013, #30 Burger Counter, #32 The Corner and #36 The James Joyce all fell out of the rankings entirely.

Here, in a brief chart, is our field of 64 for 2014 and how they did vs 2013:

Photos: The Beijinger

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admin's picture admin Submitted by Guest on Mon, 09/29/2014 - 09:46

I've thought about making it double-elimination: this way a venue has to lose twice to be bumped out of the tourney. This reduces the chance that a decent venue might get bumped early by luck of the draw, but it does mean more rounds of voting and a more difficult mapping process for posters, and it gets a bit hairy in the finals (typically these are used for sporting tournaments and the top seed coming from the "loser"s bracket has to beat the winner from the winner's bracket twice in order to be declared the victor, which in this sort of voting tourney doesn't make a lot of sense.

The vote totals across the competition are in the thousands -- the reason I don't release actual vote totals or margin of victory in each round is that it tends to motivate the venues to try to stuff the ballot box -- we pretty much have voting fraud detection down to a science, but the process isn't entirely automated so the more ballot-stuffing that goes on, the more work we have to do.

 

 

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cdn_china's picture cdn_china Submitted by Guest on Mon, 09/29/2014 - 08:56

What would be very interesting is the raw data. Even just the total number of votes in each round would be nice, but actual votes for each venue would be most interesting.

This is certainly a very difficult competition to organize and run. It seems clear that a few venues had an easy go making it through to the next round when the competitor was either largely unknown or, in at least one case, no longer in operation (how does it even make the cut and/or get votes?). No easy solution.

Again, be great to see the raw data.

admin's picture admin Submitted by Guest on Mon, 09/29/2014 - 05:25

The Dude is correct.

Bottom line is there is no question about it: Plan B has one of the Top 10 Burgers in Beijing, no questions asked, for two years running (I know -- I had one last weekend. It remains awesome)

Books by current and former Beijinger staffers

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The Dude's picture The Dude Submitted by Guest on Sun, 09/28/2014 - 22:19

Plan B actually didn't drop 5 places as we placed 9th in voting in 2013 and only got to compete in the burger cookoff when Blue Frog pulled out. We then tied for first when people were actually tasting the burgers, unlike this year, before voting for the best and then came in second when voting was strangley reopened after most people had already gone home or voted already and were not allowed to vote a second time. So in reality we moved up two spots, otherwise should we not have been the top seed in the second bracket instead of Slow Boat who wasn't even in the competition last year?

I hope this doesn't come across as sour grapes, I just want to compare apples to apples and not let people think our burger is worse a year later when in fact in open voting we moved up two spots.

The Dude Abides.

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