Best Burgers in Chicago, Ranked

William "Billy Goat" Sianis arrived in America from Tripoli, Greece, and opened a tavern under Michigan Avenue in 1934. The Billy Goat Tavern is most famous today for a curse — Sianis bought two 1945 World Series tickets, one for himself and one for his pet goat, got turned away at the gate, and the Cubs didn't win another title until 2016 — but the burger built the place's everyday reputation.

That reputation got a national stage in 1978, when Sam Sianis, Billy's nephew and the tavern's owner after Billy died without children of his own, became the real-life inspiration for Saturday Night Live's "Olympia Cafe" sketch — "Cheezborger, cheezborger, cheezborger! No fries, chips! No Coke, Pepsi!" Sources genuinely disagree on exactly who originated the chant on-screen (accounts name John Belushi, writer Don Novello, and even Jim Belushi depending which one you read), but the tavern's own menu sign says the words came first, and Sam kept flipping cheezborgers under that sign for decades until his death this year at 91.

Decades later, a different West Loop burger put Chicago back on the national burger conversation: Au Cheval, the no-reservations, always-a-wait spot that tops this list and became one of the most talked-about burgers in the country. Its counter-service spinoff, Small Cheval, now has six separate locations on this ranking alone — Wrigleyville, Fulton Market, Wicker Park, Old Town, Hyde Park, and Gold Coast.

Kuma's Corner took the opposite approach: instead of chasing fine-dining polish, it built a cult following in Avondale in 2005 around a heavy-metal theme, with every burger on the menu named after a metal band. Brothers Mike and Ron Cain built it together — Mike running the kitchen, Ron handling the business side — and it's gone on to land on Guy Fieri's own list of national favorites and Time magazine's "Most Influential Burgers" rundown.

The rest of this list earns its spot the same way the rest of Chicago's food does — Smash Jibarito folding a Puerto Rican sandwich format into a burger in Wicker Park, bopNgrill running a Korean-inflected burger out of Rogers Park, Little Bad Wolf doing it straight-up in Edgewater. No single style wins the argument here. That's the point.