America loses its crown as ‘home of the world’s best burger’

Spanish restaurant clinches the top spot with ‘melt-in-your-mouth’ dry-aged Galician beef and ‘super crispy’ bacon

It may be the birthplace of McDonald’s and Burger King, but America is no longer the home of the world’s best burger.
According to the “Michelin Guide for burgers”, the best burger in the world is now found in Spain – a country better known for small plates, jamón ibérico and Ferran Adrià’s signature creations at the legendary El Bulli restaurant.
But Hundred Burgers, in Valencia, clinched the top spot in the World’s Best Burgers 2024 rankings thanks to the quality of its 120-day aged beef that “melts in your mouth” and “super crispy” bacon.
“For us, receiving this recognition is the fulfilment of a lifelong dream,” Álex González, the restaurant’s co-founder, told Infobae Spain.
“We created the company with the aim of making a burger that would be a world reference and not even in our wildest dreams did we contemplate being chosen as the best burger in the world. So it is a huge honour.”
The restaurant’s rise to the top of the burger rankings is not by chance.
In 2017, Hundred Burgers’ founders Mr González-Urbón and Ezequiel Maldjian went on a four-day trip to New York to try the best 15 burgers in the city.
Initially, they did not think the trip would lead to their own restaurant. They were instead trying to improve the burgers served in Mr González’s mother’s restaurant.
But fast-forward to 2020 and the pair had opened the first Hundred Burgers branch, winning the “best burger in Spain award” shortly after.
Though their rise has been meteoric, it has not been without setbacks. One month after opening, the founders were forced to close their doors because of the Covid pandemic.
Hundred Burgers survived by temporarily becoming a delivery service, but eventually it  expanded across Valencia, where it has four sites, as well as to the capital city of Madrid, where it has three.
What makes the best burger in the world? The chefs start off every morning by baking demi-brioche bread buns in-house. The dough is fermented, kneaded and baked in their workshop, as the restaurant is keen to avoid serving frozen bread. Dry-aged Galician blond beef is then chopped up and formed into burgers by hand.
The most popular item on the Hundred Burgers menu is the Singular, which is topped with cheddar cheese, “Mum’s” barbecue sauce, bacon, caramelised onion and Camembert sauce. One of these will set you back €11.50 at any of their restaurants.
Other restaurants that made the top five were Au Cheval in Chicago and New York, Holy Burger in São Paulo and Funky Chicken Food Truck in Stockholm. Burger & Beyond, based in Manchester and London, missed out on the top five by just one spot.