The NYC Smashburger Power Rankings

Your Order: Double Classic Smashed ($11). Don’t play around.

The burgers at Smashed are all about texture: thin, lacy, burnished, patties; gooey cheese; grilled and raw onions (an inspired move); pickles for crunch; and special sauce. All that on a fluffy, slightly steamy potato bun. And when you get your teeth through every individual layer, there’s a near alchemical reaction that makes this our favorite smashburger in the city. We also like that these burgers aren’t too messy, making them a great lunch option. They’re also open until 3am on the weekends.

Your Order: Cheeseburger ($7.67). Keep it simple. 

In theory, a basic smashburger should taste the same everywhere. It’s just an extra-thin patty topped with cheese and squashed between two buns, after all. But 7th Street Burger turns the process into something more like composing a sonnet, with precise arrangements of flavor and texture. Roughly chopped onions are pressed into a beef patty made with a 75/25 blend from Schweid & Sons, and cooked until the edges get crispy. They then top it off with grilled sweet onions, a single pickle slice, american cheese, and a creamy house sauce on a gloriously greasy potato roll. 7th Street now has locations all over the city, but we like the original East Village spot best.

Your Order: Double Gotham Smash ($12) with everything, and an order of frickles ($8).

If Gotham Burger Social Club’s double smashburger had its own Instagram account, it would probably post a photo of its brown, griddled bun with the caption “So I did a thing.” Lots of places toast the inside of their buns for a buttery crisp, but GBSC on the Lower East Side toasts the exterior of the top bun, then layers it with lacy, caramelized beef patties, steamed onions, pickles and pickled jalapeños, plus a slice of gooey american cheese. The result is a textural wonderland.

Your Order: BBD Smashburger Meal ($14.45), which comes with two adds: a drink, fries, or ice cream. A very happy meal. 

The smashburgers at this counter-service Chinatown spot are bigger than average, and the standard burger comes with two thin patties. This means that you won’t finish one, immediately wish you’d gotten a double, and then consider turning around for a second—a vicious smashburger spiral, avoided. At Burger By Day, the burger is about six to nine bites, and comes with gooey american cheese, grilled onions, and a squishy bun.

Your Order: The Legendary Cheeseburger, even though it’s $21. 

Nowon calls their double smashburger legendary, and we think this Korean American gastropub nailed the name. Roasted kimchi, american cheese, raw onions, pickles, and kimchi special sauce smother two crispy, beefy patties, and a sesame seed bun brings the whole thing together. Yes, it’s a $21 smashburger. But you’re going to enjoy it while listening to Biggie, drinking a craft beer, and snacking on some honey butter tots, either at their East Village spot, or larger Bushwick location.

Your Order: The Hot Mess ($10.50), sweet yam fries ($4.75), and a milkshake ($6), because they have shake in their name and it seems wrong not to. 

You can, of course, eat an excellent smashburger at Harlem Shake, but you can also hang out in the retro diner-like space while doing so. There’s usually a band jamming on Sundays, a large sidewalk patio for summertime milkshake sipping, and it’s open until 2am on the weekends. Get the Hot Mess burger, which follows their standard double patty practice, but adds pickled cherry pepper and bacon relish, american cheese, and chipotle mayo. They also have a location in Park Slope for any Brooklyn burger cravings, and a Harlem Shake Express in LIC where you order your burger at a kiosk and pick it up from a locker.

Your Order: George Motz’s Fried Onion Burger (double, $11.50), shoestring fries ($4.25), and a chocolate milk ($5). Don’t skip the chocolate milk. 

Eating at Hamburger America might make you feel like Marty McFly before he got back to the future. This yellow-and-white lunch counter in Soho is straight out of a ’50s roadside diner, and the burgers are just as simply satisfying as what you’d expect at a place like that. The single ($7.25) or double ($11.50) smashburger “all the way” comes with mustard, american cheese, diced onions, and pickles. Nothing more, nothing less. The fried onion burger is even better, and you might find some other rotating regional styles. You may also see George Motz, the “burger historian” and founder of Hamburger America, smushing beef into the grill.

Your Order: The Krapow Smashburger ($11). 

Even without a gas connection and a sizzling hot grill, the krapow smashburger at this fledgling Thai American diner in Bed-Stuy was magnificent. Now available at lunch, and charred on a proper grill, the burger is topped with american cheese, holy basil, lemongrass-y giardiniera, and a spicy-sweet special sauce. It’s worth making up a dentist’s appointment to enjoy one on a barstool in the front window.

Your Order: Double cheeseburger ($18)—because there is no single cheeseburger, Crispy Potatoes “War Style” ($12), and a cocktail (from $15).

Rolo’s is a sit-down restaurant in Ridgewood, so you will likely come here for a full meal, but you should make sure that meal includes their smashburger. It’s on the pricier side, but it is a double patty, and it arrives effortlessly juicy, dripping with a mix of shiny grease, and dijonnaise. The smashburger here comes with one long pepper, which is well-charred and tasty, but it's also just a singular pepper, so you should also order the crispy potatoes “war style.” They’re topped with mayo, raw onions, and lemongrass-infused peanut sauce, and they are some of the very best spuds you can eat in all five boroughs.

Your Order: Single Ka Pow Burger ($8), Zaab Fries ($6).

So many smashburgers these days have the same accessories of pickles, onions, american cheese, and a special sauce. But order a ka pow burger from Zaab Burger, the Essex Market outpost of one of our favorite Thai restaurants in New York, and you’ll get something refreshingly different. The kra pow stir fry gives this burger an almost sloppy joe quality, not to mention another patty's worth of meat. We usually go for a single here because this is a hefty smash. Though the basil and pickled jalapeño do an admirable job combating all that beefy richness.

Your Order: A single patty Knockout Burger ($7), K.O. cheese fries ($6), side of honey mustard ($1), side of jalapeño ranch ($1). 

K.O. is a takeout window under the Manhattan Bridge in Chinatown that goes light on its boxing theme, and heavy on its special sauce. The sauce has pickled jalapeños, which make it actually taste a little bit different than all the other vaguely pink special sauces out there. Besides plenty of sauce, the classic Knockout Burger comes with american cheese, onions, mustard, and pickles on a soft potato bun. Eat it alongside their crinkle-cut cheese fries, topped with chipotle mayo and fried onions.

The Order: Sylvester Smash ($11), fries ($4), vanilla malt ($8).

Cubby’s, a small burger counter in Hell’s Kitchen, serves a Sylvester Smash atop a cloudlike bun, topped with nothing but crunchy slivered red onions, bread and butter pickles, and a special sauce. It’s no muss, no fuss, simple expression of the form, and very good. Dunk your fries in a malt while listening to showtunes at low volume and play a little bar ring toss at the marble counter while you’re here.

Your Order: The Classic ($6.99).

It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s a smashburger spot inside of a gas station in the West Village. Smacking Burger operates out of a supply closet-sized kitchen in a Mobil, and it’s worth noting that their classic smash is the cheapest one on this list. It’s fairly simple—onion, american cheese, sweet pickles, ketchup, and mustard on a potato roll, but if you’re willing to spend $9.99, you can get a double patty, and pink special sauce. Smacking Burger is open until 1am on Fridays and Saturdays, and there’s a picnic table outside where you can eat in case it’s 12:30am and you need beef right now.

Your Order: ShackBurger ($7.99) and crinkle cut fries ($4.49).

Someone is probably going to be mean to us on the internet for this one, but they’re probably just hangry for a ShackBurger. In LA, there’s In-N-Out, and in NYC, there’s Shake Shack. And the burger—which you can find at around 20 locations across the city, and also all over the country—is really good. Don’t go here if you have the time to read this guide and choose. But if you need a smashburger, and need it now, the odds are high that you’re 10 minutes from a Shake Shack, and that the ShackBurger with lettuce, tomato and ShackSauce will more than satisfy your craving.

Your Order: Classic Cheeseburger ($7.59), Hot Fries ($3.48), Brownie Batter Shake ($5.25).

If you don’t eat meat, you can go ahead and move Moonburger to the top of this list. Home of our favorite plant-based smashburger, the vegetarian fast-food mini-chain started in the Hudson Valley before opening its first NYC outpost in Williamsburg. The whole place is as red as a pack of Twizzlers, and the Impossible burgers, with their griddled onions and dijon-accented special sauce, are satisfyingly messy. Add american cheese for the full quadruple-napkin experience.