Our friends from Hamburguesas en Madrid want you to travel and to eat as you deserve. That’s why we have prepared a list of hamburgers that you cannot miss on your travels around the world. Now you have no excuses to say: I was there and I devour that burger!
Hamburgers are trendy, that’s nothing new. We see day after day how new restaurants – where we can eat this special plate wherever we go – appear. For those who live and enjoy Madrid, is more than usual to have some problems when the time of choosing a place arrives; but, what happens when we leave town and we would like a burger? Well, after years of deep research, we now can talk about the best (and the worst) exotic burgers that you can taste around the world. Maybe some of them are regular hamburgers, others are not so regular, but all of them are accompanied with something that makes them unique – it might be their meat, or their bread or just the fact that the place where they are cooked is a 9 hours distance by bus, driving across a lost zone in Thailand or in a heavenly beach in the heart of the Caribe.
You are travelling around the heart of China and you walk by the Tibet and arrive to the denominated ‘the land of cream and honey’, according to the book ‘Far Horizons.’ All of that sounds really nice but you’re so hungry that you would eat… a yak… a yak! Said and done, you go to that hostel, you glance at the menu and – among all that typical food – you set your eyes into the hamburger made with the meat of this cow with a lot of hair. You have your issues to make yourself clear in the language, but, finally, it arrives: nice meat, soft bread, fries and drink; all of that for least than 5 €, and it tastes like heaven! No doubt, yak’s flavor is not – by any chance – the flavor of a good ox, but hey, you can’t complain; it’s exotic, cheap and the landscape is inimitable.
MOS Burger, Japan (and neighbour countries)
We could say that MOS is the Japan version of Burger King – but it’s so much more than that. The quality, for example, it’s so much better in MOS, or the fusion of typical flavors of the Land of the Rising Sun. The locals are pretty nice and you can breathe the ‘Zen’ out of them. However, the thing that we like the most is their Yakiniku Burger – it is pretty ‘normal’ but it has stolen our heart. It’s made with laminate beef meat – until it seems like minced beef. But, the surprise thing is that instead of bread, they use two rice compacted pieces. Without any doubt, a true engineering artwork that not only wins over our eyes, but also our palates. Plus, the MOS Burger menu goes beyond, so we recommend you to look carefully their menu and let yourself seduce by the other many amazing varieties.
There’s a lot of ways of travelling, depending – and based – in the our budget. The toughest one, but also, without any doubt, the funniest one is when we travel carrying our big backpack, bus after bus, in order to minimize costs. This backpacker’s life has its own routes, summarised with the name: Banana Pancake Trail – thousands of youths around the world follow this route looking for adventures. Well, one of those places that worth a visit is Laos. To be more specific, Vang Vieng, a little town that has evolved from whisky and opium parties to eager backpackers full of knowledge. Well then, for those specimens there’s a ‘you cannot miss’ point of interest, Whopping Burger – a place where hikers gather together. Whopping Burger is run by a Japan couple and, for least than 4€, you could taste an excellent burger while you hear a lot of people of every country in the world screaming. The meat – beef, they told us – it’s surprisingly good and the plate is well worth, it’s almost a ‘gourmet’ experience – a term that is lately has become trendy in the hamburger world. In conclusion, if you are hungry and you are tired of baguettes, here you will have meat in a sandwich as your reward.
Our hamburger route around southeast Asia takes us to Chiang Mai – in North Thailand – where the street food surround us with their smokes and flavors wherever we go. In the middle of the food stall and food courts craziness we find, as it could not be otherwise, this oasis that we really love, where hamburger is the main attraction. We want to be honest, it’s not a typical food stall, this is more an establishment created entirely for tourists, seduced by the smell of the grill that also make us go crazy. For less than 4€ you could taste a fancy hamburger while you enjoy the hustle and bustle of the most crowded street in the city; thick meat, well mince, lying between two pieces of excellent bread. It’s a breath of fresh air amidst rice and chicken.
The importance of all the references that we have made before was the location and the flavor; now, we are going to talk about the black spot of the article. Georgetown is the second largest city in Malasia, and the Penang’s capital, where the most the widest gastronomical contrasts focused in one spot – as we have seen. Chinese food shares the streets with Indian food and Arabic food, so, usually the streets are filled with food stalls or food trucks of these countries. However, in the well-known Love Lane we find, amidst a lot of noodles and satay, a little stall decorated with football players and with a grill full of meat and bread that catch our attention right away. We are here to try and taste, so we cannot miss the opportunity. Meat isn’t that bad – it’s not a delicacy – and bread it’s the worst thing we have ever seen; along together, they make a plate that we can only summarise with the photo you have behind these lines. But there’s more: humidity, food on the floor, rats – walking by the place, etc., so eating this hamburger became in one of the most exotic experiences (if we could say so) that you would ever have in one of your trips.
We started our way home with a vital stop for every truly carnivore. This brand – with many establishments across the city – has a roast pig behind the glass of the restaurant itself. They mince the pig with every order until the only thing left it’s, literally, the bones. It’s a cheap burger and, plus, you can mix the roast pig meat with haggis – Scottish typical food. All of that it what makes Oink a must if you’re walking by Edinburgh.
Hamburguesería Súper Guay, Lanzarote
Ok, now we are in Spain and it maybe doesn’t sound exotic to you, but – from every angle – Lanzarote is a lovely island. After a tour for Timanfaya National Park and a deep examination of its wonderful beaches, hunger appears and there’s nothing better than a burger to calm that hungry feeling. This establishment is frequently visited by the locals and it seems that the tourists haven’t discovered it yet. It’s about an establishment that with a lot of patina that seems to only fade away over the years. Here, there’s no extravagances or crazy furniture, just chairs (a few, cause this place is always crowded) and a very cheap menu with a variety of ‘fast’ plates. A simple hamburger – not really fancy – but well, it’s 3€, it tastes like food of the gods and the toast bread is the thing that puts the quality crown to this place – at a first glance, in one of the most exotic islands of the archipelago, you wouldn’t ever bet for this establishment.
[BONUS TRACK] FoodTruck, Madrid
We have international readers and we are looking for not normal or ‘weird’ burgers, so we cannot finish without this bonus. It was open a year ago and it serves the truly Americans hamburgers. Considerable quantities of meat in an incredible balance welcomes us to an establishment that worth a visit for those meat lovers served in the most amazing ways. The best? They’re cheap, they’re really yummy and the quality is as good as big is the hamburger. What else can we ask for one of the best establishments in Madrid?
Well, that’s it. That’s our 6+1 list of the most exotic hamburgers that you can try when you travel. There are so much more, obviously, and this article could be infinite, but we have to choose only a few and not try to not get crazy. If you want to discover more places where taste unique and yummy burgers, we recommend you to follow Hamburguesas en Madrid page – they are always travelling and introducing us new places, whether in Madrid or in other cities around the world.