Best Designer Burger

A while back we were having an intense debate in the studio about the best burger in NYC. It became quite heated with questions like, can you really count the burgers at Peter Lugers? Because if you go to Peter Luger should you really be wasting your time with a burger? So let’s make this simple, I’m declaring POP Burger the best designer burger in NYC. What is a designer burger? It is a mixture of good eats, reasonably cheap prices while offering a unique twist, and delivered in a great atmosphere. POP on 9th Avenue at 15th Street in the West Village serves amazing mini meat burgers (2 for $5) in a fabulous cool space with back-lit laser-cut stainless steel walls and original Basquiat paintings hanging on the walls. I actually don’t eat meat but, their giant, $7, “invisible burger” made with fried portabello mushrooms makes this veggie lover feel like there is no reason to ever have meat again. Meat lovers will also appreciate the fact that once, while eating a regular mini burger, Marc asked me “not to talk to him” as I was distracting him from his culinary joy. POP just expanded and opened a new location in Midtown at 14 East 58th Street. They redid the entire building in the same style as the downtown location, but this time you have traditional eat-in/take out on the ground floor, dining in a lounge like setting on the 2nd floor, and a bar with a pool table on the top. You can have your burger on whatever floor and at whatever level of swank, you so choose. Be forewarned, at both locations sitting in the lounge areas does mean that your $5 burgers jump in price to $12 for the extra atmosphere/table service. However, if you are looking for a great place to sit down and grab a reasonably priced, delicious burger, this is your spot.