Survival of the Tastiest: Voting For the Burger Cup Now Open!

We've given you two weeks to explore Beijing's best burgers. We've thrown a barbecue for 4,500 people. We've introduced you to a dozen burgers.

Now is the moment you’ve all been waiting for: The voting to determine the Best Burger in Beijing has begun.

We’ve intentionally withheld this year’s bracket until the very last moment, giving you, our discerning public, enough time to broaden your burger horizons before casting your opinion.

And sample you have, as evidenced by the throngs of people who showed up to our Burger Festival on Saturday.

That, by the way, ended up being an absolute burger binge – so much so that the police had to come and put an end to our event early (ply the populace with enough juicy burgers and fine craft brews and pretty soon you'll have mayhem on your hands). Our apologies to those that came after 6pm only to find the cops had already cut the electricity.

But holy guacamole was it a good time!

Nevertheless, burger mania has yet to reach its apex. That’s right folks ... we’re just about to bite into the juiciest part of this year’s Burger Cup, where competitors go head to head to determine the city's best.

So, without further ado, feast your eyes on the official 2016 Burger Bracket:


Click to enlarge the bracket

Sixty-four of the city's best burgers have been seeded into a standard single-elimination NCAA-style bracket, designed to keep the strongest competitors from eliminating one another in the early rounds.

We determined this year's seedings using mathematics that would blind Einstein. We started with last year's final rankings, 1-64, and removed the venues that died or stopped serving burgers since last year.

We then polled a panel of 100 tasters in the days immediately before and after Saturday's Burger Fest to determine the pre-seedings from this year. The two lists were then given equal weight to determine this year's pre-seeding.

Our top four seeds remain identical – reigning champ Slow Boat; Great Leap Brewing; Home Plate BBQ, and Shanghai import Blue Frog. The next four seeds – Union, The Local, Q Mex and Let's Burger – all are veterans of last year's Top 10.

Of course the bracket is filled with newbies as well, with more than a dozen burger-slingers making their bracket debut.

Fatboys The Burger Bar is the highest-seeded newbie, debuting as the fifth seed in Bracket B after a complete sell-out at this year's Burger Festival.

Will Slow Boat’s Fryburger sizzle the competition as it did last year? Is Great Leap’s Cheeseburger truly the tastiest in town? Can three-time burger cup champion Home Plate reassert its dominance? Or perhaps will a less-heralded hamburger rise to the occasion and reign supreme?

You, our friends, will decide. Click "Read more" to cast your ballot in the first round now or extract the QR code below! And be sure to follow the Beijinger in the coming days, as voting in subsequent rounds starts at 3pm and ends at midday a few days later.

The full voting schedule is as follows:

Round of 64: May 31-June 3
Round of 32: June 3-8
Sweet Sixteen: June 8-12
Elite Eight: June 12-15
Semi Finals: June 15-17
Finals: June 17-20

The Beijinger's 2016 Burger Cup is brought to you in cooperation with the following sponsors:

Venue Sponsor:

Goodie Bag Sponsor:

Tent Sponsors:

Kids Corner Sponsor:

Media Partners:

Click "Read more" below to get the latest information about the event.