Since I stopped eating meat, I never felt the urge to consume plant-based meat substitute. Soy sausages and patties have never appealed to me. I enjoy actual vegetables so much that I simply don’t feel the need to eat fake meat. With one exception: I do love cheeseburgers.

For some reason, most veggie burgers I have tried over the years have turned out to be a disappointment. This is probably because of the huge expectation we place on a humble bean or chickpea veggie patty to be just as satisfying as a regular burger.

Image source

The veggie burger poses me a huge dilemma. On the one hand, I don’t have the appetite for meat anymore, nor feel the need to indulge in “fake meat” meals such as soy burgers. But on the other hand, these veggie patties made with real veggies such as yam, quinoa, beans etc. really DO NOT satisfy the burger craving of an epic hangover. So what would the queen of all veggie burgers be made of?

When my family has ‘carne asadas’ (BBQs), I make my signature portobello-cheese-avocado burger, which is amazing. This has also become a popular veggie option at restaurants.  Although this is a delicious concoction, it is not my go-to option when I eat out because I find it a bit lame ordering something I can make just as well or better at home.

The US fast food joint Shake Shack took this popular veggie option to the next level by stuffing it with cheese and deep frying it. I was completely ecstatics when I discovered Shake Shack’s Shroom Burger: two portobello mushrooms stuffed with cheese, deep fried in a crunchy bread crust!! It’s still a “fast food style” burger, but it is, really, very amazing. Just the fact that it’s an option on the menu says a lot about how consumer’s eating trends are changing. Shake Shack only exists in a handful of countries around the world, which is probably why the quality and the taste is superior to global chains like McDonalds and Burger King.

While Shake Shack has demonstrated creativity and boldness in their veggie burger approach, I cannot say many other restaurants have mastered it so well. I had a few veggie burgers last year, in different countries, all of which provided essentially the same experience; disappointment. On the menu, the recipes seem so appetising that it is difficult to imagine it could be anything other than delicious. However, once I took that first bite I remembered the reason why I stopped ordering veggie burgers in the first place: the mushy pattys!

While in Paris, a few months ago, I read a couple of blogs about the city’s vegan restaurant boom over the last few years. Feeling stubborn to find a decent veggie burger, I researched which place would be worth me potentially “wasting” one meal of my day for this experiment. I decided for Hank because it was the only strictly vegan place on the “best veggie burgers” lists I had seen. I figured that a place that has only vegan burgers would probably master them better than other restaurants that serve beef as the main option.

Photo credit: sparklingsugar via Flickr cc

Expectations aside, the burger was just OK. The place itself was cozy and the ingredients were super fresh and locally sourced especially for the restaurant. The lettuce was crunchy, the bun was fresh and warm, potato wedges were delicious, and the homemade ketchup, veganaise and mustard were probably the very best thing of all. But as expected, the patty…..was mushy!!!

After this experience, I expected myself to give up on the epic-veggie-burger quest. Instead, the experience at Hank launched me on a mission to find it. I could think of so many ways to make an incredible veggie burger and, to me, it was so obvious that the secret was in the patty. Shake Shack had figured out the panacea: the patty HAS to have a crunch. I was sure at least some other restaurants had to pick up on this and that there had to be more vegetarians demanding an epic-veggie burger.

And so I decided that every city I visited I would research the best veggie burger in town, in an attempt to find out what the world has achieved in terms of veggie burger greatness. It turns out that after taking the conscious decision to embark on this mission, my quest did not take very long. One week to be exact. I found it.

Vegan Junk Food Bar

The QUEEN of all veggie burgers ever to be made throughout the history of mankind lives in Amsterdam. The Vegan Junk Food Bar. Apart from a tasty patty, I didn’t really know exactly what I was looking for in the winning burger, I just knew that once I found it I would know. And that’s exactly how it went. This place blew all of my expectations completely out of the roof.

It is hard to put into words the level of complete and utter fulfillment that I felt while eating this burger. For a number of reasons;

1. First, we had to wait about 45 minutes on a Saturday. This actually made me really happy to see that a VEGAN burger place had such a long waiting line. This just shows how vegan tendencies are growing, and the stigma around it is slowly but surely reducing. I read many reviews and later talked to people who have visited this place, and it is certain that not everybody who eats here is actually vegan. Many just go because it is amazing.
2. Everything on the menu, but especially the burgers, take food-porn to a whole new level. While they look more like a sculpture than a meal, it is incredibly satisfying to both the eye and the stomach. They honestly taste so damn good. Irrespective of the fact that they are vegan, they taste better than most burgers I’ve ever had. The fact that it is vegan makes the whole experience mind-blowing.

   

3. Costing between €10 and €12, it is cheaper than most burgers in Amsterdam – and twice the size.
4. I was with a group of 8 people, and 5 of them opted out of waiting in line and went off to The Butcher around the corner. The Butcher is considered to have some of the best burgers in town. One of my friends came back to tell me how disappointed he was with his burger, saying that it was just mediocre and extremely overpriced, costing him €16. His dissatisfaction made me so happy because it was the first time I witnessed a carnivore friend be completely content with his vegan burger, while another carnivore friend was unsatisfied with his “high quality” beef.  How the world is changing 😉

While I thought that my epic-veggie burger quest would take years, after The Vegan Junk Food Bar, I do feel my quest has ended. I can’t imagine finding another veggie burger nearly as excessively satisfying as this one. For now, I will have to accumulate my burger cravings until the day that I am back in Amsterdam. Veggie burgers of the world; you may be nice, cute, and tasty, but you have a long way to go until you are AMAZING!