In Search of Seville’s Best Burger

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that burgers are bloody fantastic. They’ve got a lot going for them: they’re a self-contained food item that’s highly customizable, with a golden ratio of fat to meat to salt, all perfectly proportioned in such a delicious way so that you think the burger is probably not as bad for you as it definitely is.

Yet, while I’d been an avid consumer of burgers in Australia, I’d never really gone out in search of one in Seville. Why stray from Spanish food, I thought, when I’ve got a fairly good thing going with tapas. But this year has seen a whole bunch of burger shops opening throughout the city, with a few of them getting pretty rave reviews from palates I trust. So, I figured it was high time I doff’d my research hat and went out in search of Seville’s best burger.

Methodology

Let’s be honest, I’m not the type of guy who was just going to eat a few burgers and call it a day. I’m mad keen on well-obtained research data, so there was no way I was going to approach this burger quest with anything less than an analytical mind. So, before hitting the street in search of juicy goodness, I decided to lay down some ground rules for working out just what would make the perfect burger.

The variables

If I was going to be comparing burgers against each other, first I needed to bring them all down to the same level. With that in mind, I decided to only order the most standard burger that each place had on offer. It should be the first item on the menu, with a beef patty as the main affair. Likewise, fries had to be involved. While most burger shops include fries as a matter of principle, I still ordered them when they were optional. Because a burger without fries is like a movie without popcorn. Sure, eating popcorn shouldn’t affect how good the movie is, but it definitely does because of some sort of arcane magic. And so it is with burgers and fries.

The criteria

I also needed a solid yet flexible set of criteria with which to equally assess each bit of divine burger goodness. I settled on:

1. The patty: Since it’s the bedrock of a good burger, the patty needs to be the star attraction. It should be juicy but not too fatty, packing umami and caramelization in a delicate balance.
2. The bun: The walls and ceiling of a burger, the bun is the key structural element of the equation. It needs to give support without making itself obvious: fluffy and not too dry. It also has to be toasted. I don’t care if you don’t agree with me, because I know I’m right. An untoasted bun is essentially a hate crime, and I won’t stand for it. If it’s untoasted, a bun will soak up too much of the sauce and meat juices, to become a soggy and disintegrating mess, meaning that I go from a human person eating a perfect piece of food engineering to a monster using their bare hands to shovel ground beef and cheese into their face.
3. The accompaniments: If the patty is the soloist, then the cheese, sauce, and vegetable accompaniments are the orchestra backing it up. They should give freshness, crunch, acidity, and sweetness without detracting from the patty’s meaty glory.
4. The fries: I have a fairly objective approach to french fries. If they’re not crunchy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, they’re not good. If I wanted soggy starch with my burger I’d just order mashed potato, so don’t urinate on my face and tell me it’s raining.

And with those guidelines made clear, it was time to start the search. I’ve listed the places I went to in chronological order, with my conclusions at the end of the article (but don’t you dare skip ahead).

Seville’s Best Burger: The Contenders

Goiko Grill

Practical information:

• Address: Calle Albareda, 14; and Av. de la República Argentina, 26.
• Hours: 1pm-5pm and 8pm-12am, Monday to Sunday.
• Price: Burger, fries, and a beer for 14€.
• Main takeaway: Tasty, but the secret ingredient is Type 2 Diabetes.

Goiko Grill was my first port of call, and the only chain restaurant I visited as part of my quest. I’d made a decision early on to disregard any standard fast-food burger chain out of sake for my pride and arteries, but since opening in Seville in early 2018, this Madrid-based ‘gourmet burger’ franchise had garnered some pretty hot press. In fact, for the first three months after opening, it was impossible to get a table unless you reserved well in advance. And frankly, reserving a table at a greasy burger joint just felt like too small a step away from buying a mu-mu and calling it a day on ever going back to the gym.

So, I was interested to see what all the fuss was about. I went for the first burger on the menu; the ‘bomba sexy’: which, although being the most standard burger, still packed a massive hunk of deep-fried cheese, providing crunch, goo, and coronary heart disease in equal quantities.

The patty was thick and extra-juicy, perfectly cooked to medium. Fries-wise, however, it was a let-down. Soft, starchy, and without any discernable flavour of potato, I left them to one-side after eating a couple, and just enjoyed the heaping stack of delicious burger I had in front of me. The bun was well-toasted, and the entire thing had a good level of crunch. There was crispy bacon, taken surprisingly far for Spanish standards, providing bags of flavour and a crispiness that kept my jaw burning calories while I ate.

All in all, this was a surprisingly satisfying burger. It was also bloody massive for something that had no added extras. I struggled to finish the whole thing, and it was such a huge intake of meat and cheese in one go that I had blurred vision for the next two days.

Atticus Finch

Practical information:

• Address: Calle Feria, 98 (stall 48 in the Feria Food Market).
• Hours: 1:15pm-3:45pm and 8:15pm-11:15pm, Tuesday to Saturday. Opened Sunday afternoon and Monday night.
• Price: Burger, fries, and a beer for 10€.
• Main takeaway: Great burger with texture and juicy patty, worth a visit no matter where you are in town.

The motto of Atticus Finch is “to kill a burger”, and the meaning of this wordplay is completely lost on me. Nevertheless, this has been for a long time my go-to burger bar in Seville. It’s a pretty local place, being a small stall in the Feria Food Market near the Alameda de Hercules, with enough room for only a handful of tables.

The burgers here are well made, and they’re given a fair bit of love. The bun is well toasted and doesn’t become too soggy as you start gnawing away. The burger I ordered (the classicly-designed ‘Rita’) featured a beef patty that was juicy, blushing pink in the centre, and full of meaty flavours balanced out with some Maillard-reaction caramelization on top. There were some accompaniments to give structural support; pickles for acidity, lettuce and tomato for freshness.

And the fries—oooh the fries. I was starting to believe that there were no crunchy fries left in Seville, or that they’d been made illegal by some soft-loving fascist autocrat. Atticus Finch had without a doubt the best fries I tried in my quest throughout Seville’s burger bars: golden yellow, crunchy, with an inside so fluffy I wish I could make my pillow out of it.

In short, these burgers are nothing short of delicious. Nothing too fancy, with all of the little touches done to perfection.

The Burger Shop

Practical information:

• Address: Calle Procurador, 15.
• Hours: 1pm-4pm and 9pm-12:30am, Wednesday to Saturday. 9pm-12:30am on Tuesdays.
• Price: Burger, fries, and a beer for 10€.
• Main takeaway: Worth a visit if you’re looking for a local burger in Triana.

Normally, Triana is too far away to adequately fulfil my burger urges. Given that it’s all the way over on the other side of the river from regular Seville, it can’t satisfy the urgency of my cravings. But with my research cap firmly planted on my head, I crossed the bridge over to Triana to see if the offerings at The Burger Shop could provide the perfect burger I was in search of.

And could it? Not really, no. Don’t get me wrong, the burger was tasty, filling, and pretty cheap compared to some of the others I tried, but it just struck me as kind of soft. There was no real crunch to add texture, which meant that the carefully constructed layers of cheese, beef patty, brioche bun, and fresh veg just turned to an indistinguishable mush after the first light chew. There was some nice freshness from the iceberg lettuce and raw tomato slice, but the bacon that was promised spent way too little time on the grill. It was soft and chewy, and the flavour just got lost beneath the patty and cheddar cheese.

The patty itself was also just a little too dry for me. And the fries suffered the same fate, though they had a pretty enjoyable and strong flavour of potato, owed to the jackets they were fried in.

But, The Burger Shop did have something that none of the other places I visited had. It was the only burger joint I experienced that had the feel of a proper neighbourhood burger bar. A small space where the dining room doubles as the kitchen, there was nothing pretentious or fake about it, and it seemed as trianero as anything else on this side of town. I felt completely out of place, and not for the usual reasons of fair hair and eyes that Rolling Stone Magazine once described as blue like a Mykonos sky. So, if you’re in Triana and looking for a tasty burger with local vibes, this is 100% your place.

Cafe Bar Mega

Practical information:

• Address: Calle Macasta, 27.
• Hours: 12:30pm-11:30pm Monday to Sunday, but closed on Tuesdays.
• Price: Burger, fries, and a beer for 8€.
• Main takeaway: Local cafeteria with an emphasis on cheap, tasty, and sticky. Will need a shower afterwards.

Walking into Cafe Bar Mega is like walking into your high school’s cafeteria, if your high school was in Chernoble. Everything is bright plastic and neon lights, the air is thick and humid, and the customers look like they haven’t slept since Inception came out in theatres. It’s also home to a pretty indulgent, definitely-not-gourmet-but-very-tasty burger experience.

The theme of the day here is always sloppy. The burgers, the fries, the service, it’s all sloppy, but some of that is a good thing. I ordered their classic Jack Daniels burger; a 200g beef patty with goats cheese and a viscous, sweet, and sticky sauce made from whiskey and recycled BBQs. Everything is completely imperfect, but somehow beautiful as a result of its imperfection. The negatives are the bun and the fries; neither is taken far enough, making for a crunch that whimpers rather than bangs.

But the positive is that sauce. It amplifies all of the meatiness, caramelization, and juiciness of the beef patty, so much so that you don’t mind that a third of it ends up running down your arms. Seriously, I had to go to the bathroom and wash my forearms after finishing the burger, and I’m still trying to work out if that was a positive or a negative thing to have happen to me.

It might be ugly as sin, but god dammit it’s good.

Nickel

Practical information:

• Address: Calle López de Arenas, 4.
• Hours: 12:30pm-4:30pm and 7:30pm-12:30am, Sunday to Thursday. 12:30pm-5pm and 7:30pm-1am, Fridays and Saturdays.
• Price: Burger, fries, and a beer for 13€.
• Main takeaway: Missing touches of finesse, not worth a visit unless you’re in the neighbourhood and starving.

Nickel is Seville’s newest burger bar, and one that I’d already heard a bit of buzz about. Allegedly, it was home to the best burger one could find in the Arenal district, so my expectations were set high. Too high? Definitely.

The phrase that comes to mind when thinking about my experience at Nickel is; just not quite. I ordered the “Nickel Classic”, a beef burger on a brioche bun with the standard accompaniments of tomato, lettuce, red onion, and the special house sauce; a slightly thin version of a spiced mayo. The bun was just not quite toasted enough, making the burger a bit too chewy and leaving doughy residue on the roof of my mouth. The beef patty was just not quite grilled enough, meaning it was slightly under the al punto it was supposed to be. There was also just not quite enough caramelization to bring its meaty flavours to the fore. The fries, too, were just not quite fried enough. They were sad and floppy things, a pale yellow rather than a saliva-inducing gold, and a few of them were still a bit starchy.

While there was a bit of crunch from a generous topping of raw red onion, it wasn’t enough texture from stopping the burger from being a bit too soft, overall. Also, while it’s not a dealbreaker, what kind of standard burger doesn’t have cheese????? It feels so instinctively wrong, like a hippo in a top hat.

The Best Burger in Seville: The Conclusion

At the end of my quest to find Seville’s best burger goodness, I came to the end having learnt one key thing: always trust your instincts. I visited five places all in different barrios of Seville. They all had different decor, different clientele, and a different emphasis on the burgers they wanted to serve. But in the words of T.S. Eliot, the end of all our exploring is to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. And so it was with burgers. Because, at the end of day, it was my old favourite that stood above the rest. Atticus Finch, I take my hat off to you.

Their burgers were so full of love, honesty, aside from the excellent grilling of the meat, that they’re impossible to look past. Plus, they are the only fries worth ordering that I tried throughout my quest. So, if you’re looking to satisfy your burger urges, head to the Mercado de Feria and say hi!

Do you have your own favourite burger place in Seville? Let me know if I’ve missed any by leaving a comment. I promise I am always looking out for the next best grilled and greasy goodness! And if you’re looking more food nerdery, have a read of this article for more info on what variables go into a great burger. 

Read more

Looking to eat more good food while you’re in town? Check out my ultimate foodie guide to where to eat in Seville!