Over at Food and Wine, Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert break it down…like this:

Fancy Chefs Making Burgers

AB: I understand this trend. It’s dismaying, but I completely understand the impulse. What chef wants to die broke? And let’s face it: Burgers are good. But it is definitely a little dismaying, any time you see really great chefs cooking below their abilities by putting out a burger.

ER: A burger is part of the menu at our Westend Bistro in Washington, DC. Our burger was actually inspired by McDonald’s—except for the quality of the meat, of course. A McDonald’s bun is perfect. You put it in your hands; it’s not too big, it’s not too tall. The ratios, the slice of tomato—for some reason, it’s all perfect. The pickles are perfect. The shredded salad, it’s not too much, not too little. When we did our burger, for us, it was a very interesting research project. We looked at companies like McDonald’s and Burger King and thought, What is great in their approach? And how can we make it great with the meat that we have, which is, obviously, of different quality?

[Photo Via:  Gourmet]

Over at the Times‘ food blog Diner’s Journal, Pete Wells compares seven burgers around town to the Shake Shack burger.

[Photo Credit: Todd Kellen]

Serious Eats gives us 11 burgers around the country that are worth the hype. This simple-looking burger from JG Melon looks good enough to troop over to the East Side, don’t it?