Local couple sets out to eat Atlanta’s 20 Best Burgers

Amy and Chad Gregory have custom-made T-shirts and a Facebook group to prove their dedication
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Earlier this month in Atlanta magazine, we released a list that was a long time coming: the top 20 burgers. For two months, I plowed through burgers across metro-Atlanta, driving as far as Lawrenceville and testing as many as five a day. Ranking something so universally loved is bound to ignite (and re-ignite) discussions, and I’ve enjoyed the feedback as the list makes its way around the Internet and into mailboxes.

Photograph courtesy of Amy Impara
Photograph courtesy of Amy Impara

The first day subscribers received the January issue, a man called my office. Hi there, my friend and I are both attorneys, and we’d like to ask you a question. Turns out, he just wanted to know whether the burgers were ranked or not (they are). Another caller was determined to eat and re-rank all 20 and promised to send me his notes. But nobody, as far as I know, has gotten as serious as Amy and Chad Gregory. Amy, a co-founder of a sales-training company, and Chad, the president of United Egg Producers, have vowed to eat through the list and have made T-shirts with the 20 burgers listed on the back. They’re chronicling their journey on the Facebook group, Atlanta Burger Bonanza 2015. I spoke with Amy to find out more.

You’re clearly serious about this. I mean, you made T-shirts. How did this happen?

It all started when I was getting a root canal. I was sitting in the reading room of the orthodontist, and Atlanta magazine was on the coffee table. I picked it up, saw the burger, and started reading. Sometime between that and the drilling of the my tooth—by the time I got home, I thought it would be a really fun idea. It has evolved into doing our own ratings, and then I was ordering T-shirts. This all happened over a day. We’re going to do this over the span on 2015. It’s kind of like an old married couple looking for something to do.

People will talk your ear off about the best burgers in Atlanta. Total strangers want to give us their opinion. Because we’re getting so much attention, we’re going to do a bonus burger, and we’re going to take the recommendations, and we’ll go and try them. And then we’ll rate them. The best one of those will get an honorary mention on the list.

Were you surprised by anything on the list?

I guess I had always heard about Flip Burger. I’ve never had it. We both had the Vortex burger, which we didn’t care for. There are a lot of obscure places on the list. When we show people the list, everybody is kind of like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe that this one isn’t on there.’

Do you think you’ll still be able to fit into those T-shirts after you’ve eaten all 20?

I doubt it, but I hope so. I’m just having to work out more. Chad has decided that he’s not going to wash the shirt for the entire year. He already has a mustard stain from Holeman and Finch and a ketchup stain from Shake Shack.

Take the challenge yourself—view all of our 20 Best Burgers.

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