May the Tastiest Burger Win! Field Cut to 32 After Stiff Competition in Burger Cup First Round Voting

Robynne Tindall, Contributing Editor | May 26, 2017 6:58 pm | 3 comments | 2349 reads

Only the juiciest, tastiest, most mouthwatering burgers survive in the brutal (but fair) Burger Cup and with your votes now in from the first round of voting, the field has been slashed to 32. 

As always, all the venues put up a good fight and we were sad to see the first half go. Unsurprisingly, back-to-back winners Slow Boat Brewery sailed through, as did former trophy holders Home Plate BBQ and other top seeds Great Leap, The Local, Blue Frog, and Q Mex. 

Cannon's Burgers, a favorite at the Burger Cup festival, has emerged as the strongest new entrant this year, seeding third in Bracket D.  

We would also like to take this opportunity to give a shout out to Common Burger, who had an outstanding showing but, unfortunately, had to be excluded from Top 32 consideration as they do not have an open restaurant and their reopening date has not yet been set.

Be prepared for more stiff competition as we move into the next round, voting for which will close at noon on May 31. 

Vote now in the 2017 Burger Cup Round of 32

Here are the brackets going into the Round of 32:

BRACKET A
Seed
1. Slow Boat 
2. Blue Frog 
3. The Local 
4. Lily's American Diner 
5. Burger Break 
6. 4corners 
7. Paddy O'Shea's 
8. Grandma's Kitchen 

BRACKET B
Seed
1. Q Mex 
2. Fatboy's The Burger Bar 
3. North Capital 
4. Katchup
5. Lush 
6. XL Bar 
7. High Town 
8. VSports Bar and Restaurant 

BRACKET C
Seed
1. Great Leap Brewing 
2. Let's Burger 
3. Plan B 
4. Stuff'd 
5. Biteapitta 
6. Ramo 
7. Kenny's Burgers 
8. 1F 

BRACKET D
Seed 
1. Home Plate 
2. Jing-A 
3. Cannon's Burgers 
4. The Big Smoke 
5. Feast 
6. Caravan 
7. Tim's Texas Bar-B-Q 
8. Morton's of Chicago 

And what of the people voting? Well, it looks like we have a fairly educated burger populace, with the average voter having tried at least seven different burgers in Beijing. However, that also means there's a lot of room for improvement; we expect you to use this list of 32 as a starting point to educate your palate: most of you have 25 additional burgers on this list to try, so get out there and do some eating before you cast a ballot in the next round.

Our voters are active foodies too, eating out on average 30 times a month. One in three eat lunch out five or more times a week, and one in four eat dinner out five or more times a week. Certainly that means many of you have room in your dining out schedule for a few more burgers.

As for top toppings on burgers, cheese was your runaway favorite, with almost half selecting it as a must-have on your burger. The favorite toppings (in order) are: 

1. Cheese
2. Bacon 
3. Onions
4. Avocado
5. Pickles
6. Tomatoes 
7. Fried Egg
8. Mushrooms 
9. Lettuce
10. Jalapeños
11. Spinach
12 Arugula

Perhaps unsurprisingly, beer was by far and away the favorite beverage to accompany burgers at any time of the day. Check out the beverage rankings below: 

1. Beer – 33 percent
2. Carbonated soft drinks – 14 percent
3. Iced tea – 11 percent
4. Lemonade – 8 percent
5. Milkshake – 8 percent
6. Juice – 8 percent
7. Water – 6 percent
8. Mixeddrinks/cocktails – 4 percent
9. Wine – 3 percent
10. Milk – 2 percent

​​​​​​Stay up to date with all the Burger Cup-related happenings on our blog.

More stories by this author here.

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images: the Beijinger, picserver, pixabay

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admin's picture admin Submitted by Guest on Sun, 05/28/2017 - 08:48

WJH: Legit question. Here is the answer(s):

1. We like the survey to target laowai a little more because we think they have more experience eating burgers. Let's face facts: if we scientifically attempted a poll of the entire population of Beijing on what they feel the best burger is, the winner is going to be inevitably McDonald's.

2. We believe almost every college-educated Chinese person in Beijing has enough English reading skills to fill out our survey, which is written in very simple English. If they did not, they would not have been able to pass the standard college entrance test.

3. Our surveys have been victimized in the past by ballot stuffing, which is most often outsourced to Chinese people working low-wage jobs, often outside of Beijing. These people are less likely to read English and therefore the lack of a Chinese interface helps us eliminate or at least slow down their ballot stuffing.

4. We intentionally make our surveys long and detailed. Yes, This deters some legitimate voters who do not wish to spend the additional five minutes it takes to fill out the survey once. A long survey really angers those that intend to stuff the ballot box hundreds of times -- these people will have to spend hours and hours in their attempts to cheat.

 

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wjh's picture wjh Submitted by Guest on Sat, 05/27/2017 - 15:56

A few sincere questions for the folks at the Beijinger: Is there a reason why there's no Chinese-language voting interface? Is English the only language that matters when tabulating burger votes? Was a Chinese interface never considered? Was it considered and abandoned?

I was at the burger cup last weekend and most people were Chinese. Do they have to be able navigate an English-only survey (plus a few cheeky jokes) for their opinion to be valid? I'm wondering how many votes/opinions regarding the city's best burgers are not being calculated because you can't be bothered to translate a very simple online interface. I think of places like Katchup, run entirely by Chinese staff, who continually participate and do well in this competition, but are unable to communicate to their Chinese customers how to click in all the right places.

I get it. You're an English language magazine/website. But you frequently provide information in both English and Chinese. Why not for these burger and pizza cup events? Seeing as we live in China, and the majority of a restaurant's customers are Chinese, why wouldn't you want to include the primary customer demographic?

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