Welcome back to the Great Burger Battle! Yesterday was a close race between two worthy competitors: Central and Burger Tap & Shake. In the end chef Michel Richard’s lobster burger proved no match for Jeff Tunks’s “six buck chuck,” which cracked Team Crustacean for the BTS win.
While the last food fight was between two local chefs, today’s round takes us international. On one side we have the New York-based Shake Shake, which started in 2004 as a hot dog stand in Manhattan’s Madison Square Park, and grew into a worldwide phenom with five locations in our area. The question of the day is: can double Shackburgers best a homegrown chain? Elevation Burger began as an organic, grass-fed “better burger” joint in Arlington in 2005, and the franchise has since expanded across the nation, and to Mexico and the Middle East. The enviro-friendly philosophy skews healthy—there’re vegan and veggie options—but don’t forget about the ten-patty “vertigo burger,” which clocks in at nearly a day’s-worth of calories.
Can Shack Attack beat the Vertigo Stack? Vote for your favorite in the poll.
Anna Spiegel covers the dining and drinking scene in her native DC. Prior to joining Washingtonian in 2010, she attended the French Culinary Institute and Columbia University’s MFA program in New York, and held various cooking and writing positions in NYC and in St. John, US Virgin Islands.
