Food critic Tim Carman visits readers' favorite burger spots in D.C.

Any list labeled the “best” of this or that is, in the eyes of almost every reader who reviews it, an edifice meant to be torn down. My roundup of the best burgers in D.C. was no different. I was bombarded with enough recommendations — many offering real restaurant burgers to sample, not just the usual snark: “the one I grill in the backyard” — that even I started to question the validity of my choices.

Clearly, according to readers, 45 burgers wasn’t a large enough sample to compile a list daring to call itself the best in the D.C. area. So I took some of their suggestions — the ones with repeated mentions — and went back into the field to eat more hamburgers and see if I needed to re-examine my list. Here’s what I found.

The 10 best burgers in the D.C. area

The Sunshine burger at Sunshine General Store

To reach the grill at Sunshine General Store in Brookeville, Md., you have to walk past the front counter, where you’ll probably find co-owner Laura Pullen working the cash register — in front of a pegboard wall of gimme caps, battery four-packs and an old wooden sign, half-concealed, that says, “Cheeseburger in Paradise.”

Sunshine isn’t perhaps the paradise that Jimmy Buffett had in mind. If there’s any breeze at the corner of New Hampshire and Georgia avenues, in the upper reaches of Montgomery County, it won’t ferry the briny bouquet of the Caribbean. It will smell of gasoline, from the pumps just outside the blue-and-white cinder-block building that houses Sunshine, which, Pullen says, was a garage in its early days.

There are four stools at the counter in back. I’m sitting on one branded with a Jim Beam logo. The menu is pressed into a battered letter board above the prep table, and by the looks of it, the only characters that have changed on that board are the ones denoting prices. The other letters and numbers have a patina of grime, as if you could mark time through the accumulation of grease on them.

From my perch, I order the “famous Sunshine burger,” with cheese. Pullen co-owns the general store with her husband, Neil, and if you ask her why their hamburger has become so celebrated, she’ll just shrug. “I have no idea,” she says. “People are crazy about it.”

Part of the burger’s appeal is the atmosphere in which it’s served. Sunshine feels as if a wormhole mysteriously appeared in rural Maryland, circa 1973, swallowed the store whole, and set it back down on the same corner 50 years later. The walls are wood paneling. One table is Formica. The decor consists of a Hershey’s Milk Chocolate candy bar sign affixed to the paneling, not far from a taxidermy fish. The fish was there when Laura and Neil bought the place in 2002. “I don’t like changes,” Laura tells me.

The Sunshine burger is, like the store itself, nothing fancy. The 80-percent-lean ground beef is delivered fresh from FoodPro a couple or three times a week, Laura says. She’s not sure what cut, or cuts, are used in her beef blend, but Sunshine has developed a proprietary seasoning that she won’t reveal, not even under intense questioning from a hungry reporter. The commercial buns are big — five inches in diameter — and sprinkled with sesame seeds. Laura compares them to the buns used for the Whopper.

The buns are large enough, in fact, to contain the half-pound patty. These are not smash burgers. They are thick, loosely formed patties, stacked as high as you’d like. Laura knows customers who slip three between those oversize buns, for a meal that’s hard to handle and hard on the arteries. Each patty is cooked on a griddle, by either Margarita or Sonia, who are happy to keep their full names to themselves. Unless otherwise requested, your burger will be cooked well-done, with no shade of pink visible to the naked eye.

Despite this, the Sunshine burger is a tender bite. Your teeth sink into it with little resistance, the ground beef, seasonings and fat just barely held together under a layer of good, gooey American cheese. The raw onions are placed on top of the patty, the thickly sliced dill pickles and tomatoes on the bottom. It’s a simple burger, executed to perfection. I left nothing on my plate during two visits.

The verdict: The Sunshine burger deserves a spot on the original list. It checks all the boxes: an unassuming preparation that trusts the basic building blocks of a good burger, even if they’re not necessarily the kind of ingredients sought out by chefs in white-tablecloth restaurants. A bonus: You can gas up the car for the drive home.

$9.55 for a Sunshine burger with cheese at Sunshine General Store, 22300 Georgia Ave., Brookeville, Md., 301-774-7428.

The Standard burger at Garden District

James Waterhouse, general manager at Garden District, likes to compare the Standard burger to one you might get from a buddy at a backyard cookout. Maybe you know such a guy: He may seem too drunk to be cooking over hot coals, but in reality, he’s just drunk enough not to overthink the process.

“He hands you a burger, and it’s just magical,” Waterhouse says, summoning up this fictional backyard cook. “And you’re wondering how it could be so good. He probably didn’t spend a whole lot of time forming the patties before he put them on the grill, so they’re nice and fluffy.”

I know this experience well — that is, if you substitute a sober father for a drunk friend. In fact, the principles of simplicity, nostalgia and basic burger architecture guided my weeks-long search earlier this year. Waterhouse and the crew at Garden District grasp that burgers don’t demand a chef’s touch; the ideal preparation had been worked out long ago by countless backyard barbecuers and short-order cooks, who always understood that perfection lay in just a few choice ingredients.

The Standard burger starts with 80-percent-lean ground beef from Creekstone Farms. Jose Reyes, the man in charge of burgers during the busiest shifts, will cook your seasoned five-ounce patty on a gas grill, while crisping up your bun on a flattop. The patty is sprinkled with shredded cheddar cheese before being tucked into a brioche potato bun slathered with housemade burger sauce, a nine-plus-ingredient condiment that conceals the umami bomb known as Worcestershire sauce. The burger is garnished with onions, tomatoes and garlic-dill pickles sliced fresh in the kitchen.

The bun can sometimes dwarf the patty, which shelters inside the bread like a turtle hiding in its shell. But that bun can’t begin to contain the rush of flavors that floods your palate on first bite. The sauce, applied liberally, drips onto everything within a two-foot radius of your plastic basket, adding a visual contrast to your meal: messy burger; clear, direct flavors.

The verdict: Maybe? I can’t quite make the call without sampling, again, a few of the hamburgers on lower rungs of the list. The Standard burger deserves, at the very least, an honorable mention, which is no consolation prize. There are seriously good hamburgers among those that just missed the cut.

$15 for a Standard burger and fries at Garden District, 1801 14th St. NW, 202-695-2626. gardendistrictdc.com.

The Burger Américain at Le Diplomate

Nothing about the Burger Américain qualified it for a spot on my original list: It’s expensive. The restaurant that serves it doesn’t specialize in burgers. Its sesame-seed bun sports a pair of toothpick flags, one French and the other American, as if France now wants a little credit for a dish that the country has mocked for years.

Nothing about the burger qualified it, I should say, except for its utter deliciousness.

Readers urged me to give the Burger Américain a shot, and I’m glad I did. Upon closer examination, the burger shares a lot in common with those specimens that did make the list: It’s unfussy, which I didn’t expect. The burger begins with a pair of four-ounce patties, seasoned with salt, then flattened on the plancha, just like every other smash burger out there. The custom blend comes from Pat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors, and it combines cuts of short rib, brisket and top round. Le Dip’s kitchen knows how to let those patties sizzle in their own fat, until they develop an exterior crust that delivers both flavor and texture. Executive chef Will Trover says the burgers are even better late in the day, when the plancha has been well-used.

“By the end of the day, it’s relatively well-seasoned,” he says of the flattop. “The burgers take on even another layer of flavor.”

The cheese is the processed yellow kind. The red onions are shaved. The housemade bun is brioche. The biggest secret here is the condiment, which Trover describes as a combination of Thousand Island dressing and tartar sauce, complete with cornichons chopped into the mixture. It’s the only French element in the burger, Trover tells me. Except for that flag, of course.

The verdict: No, I’m sorry. I can’t find space for it on the list. I had already added one burger that broke the $20 barrier (the one from the Capital Burger). I can’t include two, no matter how well-made I find the Burger Américain. I feel like it undermines my mission to find affordable meals. Plus, enough people love this burger already. Le Dip will be fine without the recognition.

$24 for a Burger Américain and fries at Le Diplomate, 1601 14th St. NW, 202-332-3333. lediplomatedc.com.