Burger battle was such a filling experience literally and figuratively. 3 hours of all can you eat burgers and drinking beer. This year I went. It was rainy and having an umbrella was more of a burden than useful as you need all the hands to hold your burger and beer. Having a ponchos was the smartest choice we made that day. TIP - Come early! After a while some places run out of food if they are not out of food the lines become a 20 - 30 minute wait. Instead of a under 5 minute wait. If you have friends, divide and conquer and you will be able to try every single burger. So the food, yes. The burgers were great overall! If you love bacon, you will love this place as many of these places had bacon on their burger. Which is personally not ideal for me as I do not eat bacon. Crazy I know right!?!?! But there are many burgers that do not have bacon. Overall the burgers and beers are great. This event is fun and worth it, to do it once in your life. read more

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I absolutely love the idea of this event, and only wish it had slightly better execution. The deal is that you pay $55 for a ticket and get unlimited burgers and beer for three hours. It's a bit on the expensive side, but hey, all the proceeds go to charity. This year featured 25 local restaurants serving 2500 attendees. Some quick math with probably have you asking, "Wait, does that mean that 100 people are waiting for burgers from each restaurant at any given time?" Herein lies the problem. Allow me to set the scene. I attended the event with my fiance. Both of us were keenly aware of our meat consumption limitations going into this, so we came armed with a plan. Most of the burgers that are served here are sliders, with the rest being full-sized burgers that are cut into halves or quarters. Our plan was to only get one burger at each tent, which we'd then split, thereby allowing us to sample all 25 burgers without puking halfway through. We made sure to arrive early before the gates had opened, and there was already a long line to get in. Still, we were probably among the first couple hundred of people to enter, and we quickly grabbed our first pair of burgers from two adjacent tents. We each ate half, then traded burgers. Things were off to a good start. What we didn't realize was that while we were busy savoring those first few bites, the rest of the 2500 attendees had arrived, and each tent suddenly grew a very long line. We got into separate lines, following our agreed upon divide and conquer strategy, and about 15 minutes later had another pair of burgers to sample. Sadly, the wait times only increased from there. We decided that waiting in line for the super popular places (Red Cow, 5-8) just wasn't worth it, and instead got into some of the (comparably) shorter lines for the less well-known restaurants. This proved to be a pretty good strategy. We tasted some really good burgers, and some pretty disappointing ones. Now, the event touted itself as having unlimited beer in addition to unlimited burgers. We each managed to snag a beer right at the beginning, before the line got out of control. For the rest of the time, the beer line was consistently about four times long than any of the individual burger lines. This just didn't seem worth it to us, so we resorted to just getting bottled water, which had no line for the entire duration. This thing was supposed to last for three hours, which is how we were timing our burgers, but in actuality most of the tents ran out of something about two hours in and started packing up. I think the two hour mark was when the official judging started, so after that they didn't really have an incentive to keep handing out burgers. In the end, we ended up trying 13 different burgers, and truth be told we were super full at around the 9 burger mark, but thought we should at least pass the halfway point. This didn't end up being as fun as I would have expected, but after interviewing some fellow burger aficionados, we realized that we just didn't have the right battle plan going in. Here is the winning strategy, which we may yet implement in future years: 1. Come with a large group of friends. Eight people seems to be the ideal number. 2. As soon as you arrive, split up and have six people get in line at different tents, while the two remaining people get in the beer line (this ratio can of course be altered depending on if your group wants more burgers on more beer). 3. Each person in line at a burger tent takes two burgers when they reach the front. Each person in the beer line grabs as many beers as they can carry. 4. Meet up a one of the picnic tables. Cut each burger into fourths, and split the beer as you see fit. Everyone eats their six burger pieces, and has some beer. 5. Send your party out once more, this time to a new set of tents. 6. Repeat until everyone is full of burger and beer goodness. We actually encountered a couple of groups that were using this or a similar strategy. The general consensus seemed to be that this was a good way to taste all 25 burgers without feeling sick afterwards. read more

To some, it may seem crazy to travel from Chicago to Minneapolis for a burger battle. To my husband and I, it seemed like the greatest idea ever - and it was. The 2014 TC Burger Battle was the first annual burger battle. If 2014 was any indication of it's potential, it's probably only going to get bigger and better every year. It was held at Mears Park. I gathered that this event was going to be a cluster, judging by my search on Google images--- but it was large enough for all the tents and people with plenty of room to spare. The booths were far enough apart that you didn't feel like you were cramped while waiting in line, but they also weren't so far apart that you spent a lot of time walking. Tickets were approx $40 (plus a service charge) each but once you bought your ticket, you were allowed to consume as many burgers and beer as time allowed. We were surprised that the beer lines were super short and we probably could have got a lot more if we drank faster. They were also giving out water bottles and Mountain Dew kickstarts for the non-drinkers. I have to give major amounts of props to the event planning company. This was so well-organized and definitely the best festival that I've ever attended. To start, everyone was REALLY friendly and made conversation while waiting in line. At a lot of the fests I've been to in Chicago, it's usually every man/woman for themselves, but not here. I believe there were 12 burger vendors and we managed to consume 9 sliders each. We kept hitting a meat wall and it took us the entire allotted amount of time to do so, but it was possible. Most of the burgers were fantastic and worth waiting for. IMO, The French onion burger from Red Cow was the darn best burger of the fest and a burger that I'll dream about for the rest of my life. Random things to know: *Follow them on Facebook for a countdown and news. *We lost our tickets an hour before the event. We remembered reading online tickets HAD to be printed out, so we went to the business center to reprint them. It turns out they were accepting mobile tickets. Check their FB page for clarification on mobile vs paper tickets for future events. *Don't eat AT ALL before this event. You're going to want to try everything. *Some businesses were giving out SWAG. Hit these ones up first before they run out. *We attended the pre-party at Faces. They scanned our tickets and we got in without having to wait in line. We were able to get down 2-3 burgers before most of the public was even through the gates. If there's a pre-party promising special entrance, GO!! It's worth it even if you end up having to buy a drink or two. *We somehow missed the announcement that the voting chip had to be in an hour into the event, so I didn't get to vote for Red Cow :( Make sure to pay attention to the rules so you can vote for your fave. If you get a chance to attend next year, I highly suggest that you do so. I'm sure that 2015 will be even better. read more

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2 stars may seem a little harsh, but I'll explain why this is what it deserves as succinctly as possible. The food, was for the most part very good which is why you would go in the first place. Burgers ranged from the cusp of legendary flavor to the taste of what can only be described as genocide. For this, there are no complaints and honestly the variety was quite pleasing. Additionally, there were non-existent beer lines, which was great! Not that I really enjoy beer, I can appreciate the proper planning. The issues are scattered throughout, starting with the location. The location itself was great! However, they posted the wrong address. Seeing as how my friends and I walked, if we have the wrong location it's going to cost a good amount of time to reroute. So, we ended up being late for the battle as well as having walked an extra mile and a half in the rain. Then, the advertisement of unlimited beer and burgers. The price in 2014 was 40$, this year, 2017, I paid 65$. That's fairly steep, but if you get unlimited beer and burgers, certainly worth it. However, at 7:00 (one hour before this three hour event was supposed to end) most, if not all, of the good burger vendors were completely out of burgers. This to me seems unacceptable with 1 full hour left of what I anticipated to be 3 hours of glorious overindulgence. At 65$, I'd damn well better be able to eat until 8pm. Then, there were the lines. I won't complain too much, except for the fact that it was cold and rainy. So, I can only assume more people would have showed if it were beautiful out and then the lines would've been DISGUSTING. They were mostly tolerable, but there has to be a way to improve upon it, especially if the price keeps going up. read more

I love burgers! No, I really love burgers! I once waited 3 hours at a restaurant that was rated the best burger in the Country. When I heard about the Twin Cities Burger Battle, there was no thought process involved. I was going. The way it works is 25 restaurants set up on Harriet Island and made burgers for this event. Each attendee received a token to vote as there would be a people champion and a judges champion. Now depending on who you are and your strategy, this could be the event of a life time. Joey Chestnut or Matt Stonie, that could be fun to watch. The average person I suggest you have a plan. My plan while a bit flawed did result in a very happy and enjoyable event. And me buying a couple of extra pairs of sweatpants to wear. So I attended this event with my foodie buddy and life partner, my wife. Being a detailed guy my goal was to try all 25 burgers. This seemed like a great idea until I got to like the 13 or 14 place. Luckily for us the first place we tried was our favorite and ended up being the peoples champion. We were really impressed that with 25 restaurants and an estimated 2500 attendees, each restaurant really produced a quality burger. Everything from gourmet toppings to custom meat blends and taking the time to toast the buns. Our favorite burgers were Peppers and Fries, St Paul Grill, Red Cow and My Burger. Choosing our favorites is like a parent picking their favorite child. For the record we only tried 23 of the burgers and I only made it 23 in honor of Michael Jordan. Yeah I know kind of lame but I'm a Chicago guy. We did not try B-52 as we were there recently and didn't have the Juicy Lucy since we have also tried that. The last 7 or 8 bites were definitely smaller than the first 13-14. Three hours of all you can eat burgers and all the beer, pop or water is like a burger lovers heaven. The cost is very reasonable if you consider the burgers you have and any beverages. We sampled a lot of excellent burgers and found some new restaurants to try. I feel as if I need to go on a Kale diet for about the next week to get some balance back in my diet, but this even was so worth it! read more

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