Sydney has one of the best burgers I’ve ever had – here’s where to find it

The conversation around Sydney’s best burgers may have slowed in the past decade (it was ferocious in the early 2010s), but there’s no mistaking one of the world’s most recognisable culinary creations is still very much in perpetual demand.

I’ve eaten some incredible burgers in my travels. The Angry Angry, served at the back of a drab casino in Reno, Nevada is over the top and delicious. The famous egg-powered burger at Au Cheval in Chicago (which people are known to wait up to four hours for – it’s worth it) is still the single best I’ve ever had.

The wagyu special from 4Charles Prime Rib in New York City is worth contending with the shocking US exchange rate. Tommi’s Burgers in Iceland (and again in Copenhagen) is easily the best in Europe. Aldebaran in Tokyo’s swanky Azabu-Juban neighbourhood, in such high demand that they only take a handful of bookings each day—via Instagram—is pure heaven on Earth.

And yet one of the best burgers in the world is right here in Sydney

And while I wouldn’t say I’m a burger-obsessive, I’m confident in writing that Sydney’s Ume Burger is one of the world’s best. In fact, I’d say its easily top five.

Ume’s founder, Kerby Craig, who sadly passed in 2022, cut his teeth at one of the city’s most prized restaurants, Tetsuya’s, before moving onto the long-shuttered Koi in Woolwich. It’s here where he earned his first Chef’s Hat, shortly after going out on his own and opening the highly acclaimed Restaurant Ume in a Surry Hills backstreet. The kitchen was swiftly awarded a Chef’s Hat from now-retired chief food critic Terry Durack.

Craig knew Japanese food in a way very few chef’s outside of Japan do. He would perfect everything from the Land of the Rising Sun and constantly experiment to blend flavours. Snapper carpaccio, elegant miso soups and highly textural salads dominated, but very few of Craig’s creations surpassed the signature Ume Burger with wagyu sauce.

From hatted restaurants to casual burger joints

The simple stack was met with such soaring demand that it allowed Craig to open a burger-only spin-off and spurred him to rebrand Restaurant Ume to the more casual Bar Ume. Success was peaking and Ume Burger became one of the first big success stories for the then-nascent Barangaroo.

Whenever I hear Barangaroo, that’s the first thing I think of. Sitting by the harbour on a sunny afternoon, ordering the signature from Ume Burger’s stylish open-air kitchen, inserting a few coins into Sydney’s only authentic Japanese drink vending machine, and being blown away each and every time. I’d take an Ume Burger with a cold can of coke zero over most things in Sydney, any day of the week.

The namesake Ume Burger has always been a beast, postured closer to a traditional bolognese-style sloppy joe than a standard wagyu cheeseburger, with a signature beef pattie sitting in the centre of cheese, lettuce, tomato, some rice vinegar pickles, and house-made sauce. Alexandria’s formidable Textbook Patisserie provided Ume with the Hokkaido-style milk buns, deftly engineered to keep the burger’s structure in-tact, and the slightly sweet housemade sauce soaked into the bread perfectly. It was Kerby’s masterpiece.

And yet the Ume Burger wasn’t (and still isn’t) the most popular thing on the menu. That’d be the Ebi Burger, a unique prawn katsu burger taking after a similar McDonald’s item in Japan. It’s simple, equally delicious, and gets its golden crunch from a minced and fried prawn patty dressed with shredded cabbage and a tangy tartare sauce.

My heart skipped a beat when I saw this week that Ume Burger Barangaroo was shutting down. Thankfully, the team still have an Ume Burger outpost in the neon-lit Darling Square (which, for visitors, is right near Hay St Market, Chinatown and Darling Harbour). And yes, the menu is still the same.

Ume Burger

Address: 2/1 Little Pier St, Haymarket NSW 2000
Opening Hours: Tuesday (11:30am – 2:30pm); Wednesday – Saturday (11:30am – 230pm, 4:30pm – 9pm); Sunday (11:30am – 2:30pm)

umeburger.com