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As the Middle East’s most expensive city, Dubai is a playground for the world’s rich and powerful. It is a teeming metropolis in which a traveler can bear witness to cutting-edge architectural, cultural, and cuisine. Even the humble burger is elevated to the status of gourmet foodstuff here, and in the following list we take you through the best of the best.

Pineapple on a burger

Burger Rebel

Restaurant, Vegetarian

Wagyu beef burger
© Katherine Lim/Flickr
True to their name, the team at Burger Rebel like to flout the rules, plastering graffiti all over the walls of their restaurant and bringing innovative flavors to their menu. The Australian, for example, is an intriguing combination of pineapple, tomato, beetroot, cheese, fried egg, barbecue sauce, and a burger that is ground in-store from the finest grass-fed beef brisket and chuck steak. In their signature burger, sliced beef tongue is topped with homemade horseradish mayo and crispy onions. All of their buns are lightly grilled, which means each bite has a satisfying crunch.

Dhow & Anchor

Gastropub, British

More Café’s terrace
Courtesy of More Café
In view of the famous Burj Al Arab hotel, Dhow & Anchor is an award-winning British-style gastropub at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel. The burger here is composed of a prime slab of Wagyu beef (the most expensive beef in the world) along with a healthy helping of cheddar cheese, a crisp bun, and a choice of homemade ketchup, onion marmalade, relish, or mustard. Guests can enjoy their meal al fresco in the terrace area or in the chic interior, which has an open kitchen.

More Café

Cafe, European

Foie gras burger
© Susan Lucas Hoffman/Flickr
A staple of Dubai’s culinary scene since its opening in 2002, this place has been voted the city’s best cafe. The build-your-own burger here has an original presentation, with the ingredients and condiments arranged on a four-tier stand. Diners select a beef patty or a slice of marinated chicken and then turn architect, adding to their creation cheese, mustard, lettuce, cucumber, caramelized onion, relish, mayo, ketchup, and dill sauce. More Café’s trademark corn-rye bread, used for their burger buns, is a welcome addition.

Rhodes Twenty10

Michelin-starred chef Gary Rhodes is behind the two premium burgers available at Rhodes Twenty10, within Le Royal Méridien Beach Resort & Spa. Each one has a 225g USDA prime fillet steak patty, and both are topped with ingredients of the highest quality. The first features Welsh rarebit, iceberg lettuce, grilled tomato, gherkin, crispy onion rings, and burger sauce. Those who opt for the second option receive seared foie gras and discs of confit potato roasted in duck fat, smothered in a deviled onion gravy. The Burj Khalifa | © stingerpk/Flickr

The Rivington Grill

The Rivington Grill provides a casual dining concept within an upscale environment, delivering the best of British cooking to Dubai. Their burger mix, minced in-house, is made up of aged beef (250-day grain-fed ribeye, sirloin and fillet, and 400-day Wagyu D-rump) as well as red onion, red chili, English mustard, and a range of other seasonings. Atop this succulent patty are piled pickles, applewood smoked cheddar, baby gem lettuce, plum tomato, Caprice club sauce, and mayonnaise. All of this is sandwiched between two lightly toasted buns, for that perfect structural integrity.

About the author

Josh is a graduate of the University of Leicester’s English and American Studies program, and spent the third year of his degree abroad at the University of Oregon. It was there that he indulged his long-held interests in archaeology and the American West, and developed a new one in Mexican food. He hopes to pursue all three and return to the U.S. in the future, and perhaps forge a career either out of writing or wandering around the woods all day.

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