6 Best Burgers in London Food Influencers Actually Rate

I'll be honest with you — I never thought I'd spend this much time thinking about burgers. I grew up in a world where a burger was something you ate at a motorway services when everything else had closed, and you didn't talk about it afterwards. But London has changed things. London has turned the burger into an event, a pilgrimage, a reason to queue in the rain outside a restaurant the size of a garden shed. And somehow, against all odds, it works.

So here they are — six spots in London (and one glorious interloper from Surrey) that food influencers keep coming back to. Not because they were paid to. Not because the lighting is good. But because the burgers are genuinely, absurdly good.

1. Bleecker Burger, Soho

33 Old Compton Street, London W1D 5JU

Bleecker was started in 2012 by Zan Kaufman, a former New York lawyer who abandoned a career in law to sell burgers out of a van. In my defence, I have also considered quitting my job for far less noble reasons. What began as a food truck has since grown into multiple locations across London, and the Soho branch — sitting pretty on Old Compton Street — is the latest.

The thing about Bleecker is that the menu is almost aggressively simple. You get a burger. You get cheese on it if you want. You get bacon if you're feeling reckless. That's it. No truffle oil. No brioche bun the size of your head. Just 40-day dry-aged British beef, cooked properly, with a house sauce that has no business being as good as it is.

Gary Eats went so far as to give it a perfect score, calling it the juiciest burger he'd had anywhere — and yes, that includes Black Bear Burger, which we'll get to. The bacon double cheeseburger at £15.15 was the standout, with the seasoning drawing particular praise. Come to think of it, when a food reviewer says "that is the best in London" mid-bite, you probably don't need much more convincing.

Read the full Bleecker Burger Soho review →

2. Black Bear Burger, Exmouth Market

17 Exmouth Market, London EC1R 4QD

If Bleecker is the cool kid who makes it look effortless, Black Bear Burger is the one who shows up with something genuinely unexpected and makes everyone reconsider their life choices. The miso bacon burger is the headline act here — umami-rich, deeply savoury, and the kind of thing that makes you briefly question whether all other burgers have been lying to you.

The team from JOLLY (including, remarkably, Jack Black) described it as "heaven on a bun," which is the kind of quote that would sound ridiculous if it weren't backed up by visible euphoria. The group consensus was immediate and unanimous: Black Bear set a benchmark that was very difficult to beat.

Put bluntly, if you only have time for one burger in London, this is the one that will haunt you if you skip it.

Read the full Black Bear Burger review →

3. Gordon Ramsay Street Burger, Covent Garden

13-14 Maiden Lane, London WC2E 7NE

Now look — I know what you're thinking. Celebrity chef burger restaurant. Inside Harrods. Wagyu. Truffle. All the words that make you instinctively reach for your wallet and then slowly put it back. And yes, this is an indulgent experience. But Harrison Webb found it genuinely impressive, particularly the Wagyu truffle burger, which features a Wagyu patty topped with additional slices of Wagyu beef and porcini mushrooms.

The bun was singled out as possibly the best of an entire London burger tour, which is not something you expect from a place you walked into half-expecting to be disappointed. The truffle parmesan fries and truffle aioli complete what is, admittedly, an obscene amount of truffle for one meal.

Is it an everyday burger? Absolutely not. Is it worth trying once, ideally when someone else is paying? Without question.

Read the full Gordon Ramsay Street Burger review →

4. Five Guys, Piccadilly Circus

Unit 1, 2 Coventry St, London W1D 7DH

I can already hear the purists. Five Guys? In a best burgers list? A chain? But here's the thing — Five Guys does something that most restaurants struggle with, which is being exactly what it promises to be, every single time. No surprises. No disappointments. Just a reliable, well-made burger with as many toppings as you can point at, and Cajun fries that Harrison Webb freely admits to being obsessed with.

The double bacon cheeseburger with the works is the move. It's not trying to reinvent anything. It's not drizzled in anything. It's just a very good burger from people who clearly know what they're doing. Harrison summed it up perfectly: "Simple and reliable. What's not to like?"

In a city full of places trying to be the most innovative, the most Instagrammable, the most everything — there's something refreshing about a place that just makes a solid burger and gets on with it.

Read the full Five Guys review →

5. Bangers, Maltby Street Market

5 Leonard Circus, London EC2A 4DQ

Bangers — or Banger Bros, depending on who you ask — operates out of Maltby Street Market, and they do one thing extraordinarily well: the breakfast burger. This is not a delicate affair. This is bacon, sausage patty, burger patty, cheese, grilled mashed potatoes, and a gooey egg, all stacked into something that looks like it might collapse under the weight of its own ambition.

Strictly Dumpling called it "one of the greatest things in the burger world," which is saying something from a man who has eaten his way across most of the planet. The grilled mashed potato is the wild card — the thing that shouldn't work but absolutely does, adding a creamy, starchy layer that turns the whole construction into something approaching genius.

This is a weekend-only, market-only, eat-with-both-hands-and-accept-your-fate kind of burger. And it's glorious.

Read the full Bangers review →

6. The Boring Burger, Guildford (The Wild Card)

15 Chapel St, Guildford GU1 3UL

I'll be upfront — this one isn't in London. It's in Guildford, which is about 45 minutes by train from Waterloo. But I'm including it because Eating With Tod made a genuinely compelling case that this might be the best burger in the entire UK, and when someone says that on camera with visible sincerity, you pay attention.

The Boring Burger is run by Chef Jamie, who has 20 years of fine dining experience — including time at Claridge's — and has channelled all of that into a 10-seat restaurant in Surrey. Every sauce is made in house. The buns come from a local bakery using Jamie's own recipe. The signature burger earned comparisons to "a Michelin-style chef getting hold of a McDonald's cheeseburger and elevating it through the roof."

But the real revelation is the fries. Tod declared them the best he's had at any burger restaurant, worldwide. Not just London. Not just the UK. Worldwide. And the mac and cheese bites were described as genuinely addictive.

On weekends, the queue is two hours long and they've had to hire a security guard just to manage it. For a burger place in Guildford. In my defence, I'd probably queue too.

Read the full Boring Burger review →