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The BEST BURGERS in New York! KIMCHI Wagyu Burger | STEAKHOUSE Burger

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Six burgers, one afternoon, and a food vlogger determined to crown New York City’s best patty.

Mike Chen has built his Strictly Dumpling channel on marathon eating crawls — ramen, pizza, hot pot — but in this outing he turns his attention to the burger, arguably the most contested category in American food. Over more than 28 minutes, Chen works his way through six of New York City’s most talked-about burger spots, weighing thick steakhouse patties against a Korean-inflected Wagyu creation that fuses two very different culinary traditions on one bun.

• Mike Chen of Strictly Dumpling tours six of New York City’s top burger spots in a single 28-plus-minute episode, tasting and ranking each in real time.
• The Kimchi Wagyu Burger pairs rich, melt-in-your-mouth Wagyu beef with the tang and crunch of fermented Korean kimchi — a deliberate cross-cultural mashup.
• A classic, thick-patty NYC steakhouse burger anchors the traditional side of the tour, contrasting directly with the fusion-style entries.

Six Stops, One Verdict

Chen structures the episode the way he structures every food crawl: no filler, straight into the bite. He breaks down each burger by patty texture, bun-to-meat ratio, and topping balance before delivering a snap verdict and moving to the next stop. It’s the same format that’s made his channel a go-to for viewers hunting for a specific dish rather than a general “best restaurants” list, and burgers turn out to suit it well — six wildly different builds in one sitting make the contrasts obvious in a way a single restaurant review never could.

The split he lands on is the spine of the video: traditional steakhouse construction on one side, boundary-pushing fusion on the other. That framing gives the tour its stakes — not just “which burger tastes best,” but which philosophy of burger-making wins out when tasted back-to-back.

The Kimchi Wagyu Burger’s Cross-Cultural Punch

The standout fusion entry is the Kimchi Wagyu Burger, built around premium Wagyu beef known for its high fat marbling and buttery texture. Chen finds the kimchi doing real work here — its sharp fermented tang and crunch cut through the richness of the beef instead of just sitting on top of it as garnish. According to the tour’s breakdown, one of the best versions in the city comes from Kakurega, a Japanese restaurant in the East Village whose take on the burger has become a customer favorite and one of the more talked-about non-traditional patties in New York.

Six burgers, one 28-minute crawl, and a Wagyu patty topped with kimchi.

What makes the pairing work, by Chen’s own tasting, isn’t novelty for its own sake — it’s balance. Wagyu’s fat content can overwhelm a burger if nothing on the plate pushes back against it, and kimchi’s acidity and crunch turn out to be exactly the counterweight that classic American toppings like ketchup or plain onion can’t provide.

The Steakhouse Standard

On the traditional end of the tour sits the STEAKHOUSE Burger, the kind of thick, meat-forward build that New York’s chophouses have leaned on for decades. Chen singles out Minetta Tavern in Greenwich Village, where the patty is reportedly made from a blend of prime beef cuts, giving it a denser, more concentrated beefy flavor than a standard fast-casual patty. It’s dressed simply — tangy onions, lettuce, tomato, a choice of cheese — because at a steakhouse burger, the beef itself is supposed to be the selling point, not the toppings stacked on it.

That simplicity is precisely what makes it a useful contrast point against the Kimchi Wagyu Burger elsewhere in the tour. One relies on ingredient collision to create its flavor profile; the other relies on doing one thing — quality beef, properly seasoned and seared — better than the competition.

Ranking the Patties, Buns, and Toppings

Chen’s scoring throughout the video comes down to three recurring checkpoints: the patty’s texture and seasoning, whether the bun holds up structurally without going soggy, and whether the toppings add contrast or just bulk. It’s a simple rubric, but running it six times back-to-back is what turns the episode into more than a highlight reel — it’s a working comparison of how New York’s burger scene splits between heritage steakhouse builds and newer fusion experiments aimed at diners who’ve already had the classic version a dozen times over.

Viewers who enjoy Chen’s format of stacking up several stops in one sitting tend to gravitate toward similarly binge-friendly YouTube tours, whether it’s a massive scale challenge or something built around sheer nerve, like a high-stakes escape room — the appeal is the same real-time, no-cuts pacing that makes Chen’s burger crawl work.

By the time Chen wraps the sixth stop, the verdict isn’t a single “best burger in New York” crown — it’s a map of two lanes worth revisiting: Kakurega’s Kimchi Wagyu Burger for anyone chasing the fusion angle, and Minetta Tavern’s steakhouse build for anyone who just wants proof that a well-sourced patty still beats a gimmick.