Some days, sushi just isn’t what the belly wants. You’ve had your fill of washoku, and you’re not up for yet another bowl of noodles. The heart cries out, “give me a burger,” and, lucky you, these days there are gourmet burger shops all over Tokyo.
Sadly, style over substance often takes priority, and many shops put more effort into their toppings than their burgers, with a veritable salad of lettuce and too-thick slices of tomato and onion dwarfing the patty.
Based on recommendations from burgerheads and chefs alike, I tried over 20 of the best burger restaurants around town, and the five shops below more than sate the hunger for a proper burger. For the purposes of a controlled experiment, I tried to stick to each shop’s bacon cheeseburger to judge them as fairly as I could. And although more foreign chains open up in Tokyo every year, I stuck to the locals for this list.