Best Burgers in the Hamptons

It can’t all be sipping Bellinis at Nello with skeletal social X-rays who look like a sprig of frisee will send them straight to the vomitorium. There are some enticing options for red-meat eaters out East, too. Everyone has ideas about what makes a good burger. Here are ours.

The bistro burger at Almond is so good, it should be eliminated from competition. The special sauce cooked into the all-beef patty is likely Bordeaux. Maybe Burgundy. They won’t say.

Chef-owner-artist Garrett Wellins at Silver’s finishes his cheeseburgers with a small blowtorch to make sure the scorch marks are in all the right places.

The burger wars in Sag Harbor might not be well-known, but there will be blood—juicy, rare, burger blood. The Corner Bar has seniority, and its burger is the reigning heavyweight champion. Across the street, the English Muffin-clad patty at JLX—Eddie “Jean Luc” Kleefeld’s Sag eatery—has a don’t ask, don’t tell policy. Stalwart Murf’s has an unfair advantage due to the high ratio of drunken patrons singing its praises, but the White Castle belly bombs are its secret weapon (a sign behind the bar claims “Last White Castle until Portugal”). New Paradise Café, with its whaler mural, is the naval superpower. And finally, NKOTB Bay Burger’s guerilla tactics make it a formidable contender.

The name really says it all at Chodorow’s Kobe Beach Club. They even slip sliders into Lily Pond for the table-service set who can’t throw their money away fast enough.

It would just be a damn shame to miss out on the burger at Rowdy Hall in East Hampton, if only because the tap selection screams out for it.

The offering at Amagansett’s Meeting House is solid, if not spectacular, but worth it for the thick farmhouse bacon alone.