I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection.

Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business.

-Michael J. Fox

So here's the thing with mine and Sara's burger rating adventures. We did something very very wrong. Haha. I loved Five Guys a lot, and yet it only got 3.5 stars. So I reconsidered our criteria, decided what was really important, what should we get rid of, what should be worth more or less, and on and on and on. I tried twisting all the different dimensions in every way I could think of to make Five Guys have a higher rating.

I'm not saying that Five Guys is a five-star burger joint. I'm not even saying that it needs to be our highest choice right now (though, it's the restaurant that I've returned to the most, and the best news I've received all week was that they're opening one in Broomfield!! I'm so excited. I've been waiting for this day for months), but I am saying that under no circumstances should Five Guys be rated the same as Carl's Jr. They just aren't on the same level. And no matter how I manipulate things, I can't make it significantly better than a really average burger place.

We've considered what our problem is. I think part of it is that usually when we go out to eat, we're super hungry, so everything tastes fantastic. That's not really something I want to change, though. But it is something we'll have to be more careful about in the future. But also, I'm not sure we've got the right criteria? I'm questioning everything about it. As a reminder, we have:

  Freshness-- which is definitely important to me.

  Juiciness-- also a good one.

  Deliciousness-- I'm not sure about this one. It seems rather vague.

  [Bun-soakage]-- I don't think I can, in good conscience, have juiciness and bun soakage count for and against a burger. If the burger is really juicy and delicious, it's going to have at least a little bit of a soaked bun, and that necessitates that you cannot physically make a 5-star burger.

  Flavor-awesomeness-- I'm not sure how this one was supposed to be different from deliciousness.

  Uniqueness-- though I think uniqueness might be a good quality, I'm not sure it's fair to include in the rating. What if the best  burger in the world is sold in a restaurant that only has this one burger on the menu, the end? Does that make the burger less perfect?

  Condiment-ratio-- ha. I just have no solid thoughts on this one. It still seems somewhat important, but not terribly so.

  [Greasiness]-- still important to me. I don't want my burgers all gross and dripping and like I need to bring Dawn dish soap with me so I can clean up afterward. Sick.

  Appearance-- this is another one that might be a good quality, but is completely unfair. I'm pretty sure we decided to drop it, but all my notes are currently downstairs.

  Side-dish deliciousness and side-dish uniqueness-- first, I no longer think the side dish should be affecting the burger's score. It's not fair. It has nothing to do with the best burger, it's a side dish. And then there's the same "deliciousness" and "uniqueness" problems as already mentioned.

  Price-- this was another one I remember we decided to drop. I mean, if the best burger in the world is a hundred bucks, it doesn't become less delicious. We'll still mention price range, but it's not a factor in how good a burger tastes.

  Fullness-level-- uh, I'm pretty sure we took this one out. Since we've never gone somewhere and not been full afterward. And it was always tricky because you can either still be hungry when you're done (which is bad) or be satisfied (which is good) or be really full (which can easily be bad). Do you down grade them because there was so much food you felt like your stomach would explode? That's just rude. You can't penalize someone for offering more food than you need. Especially if you were dumb enough to force yourself to eat all of it, even though you were full half way though. You could have stopped sooner and not felt like dying.

  [Messiness]-- messy burgers aren't necessarily a bad thing. They aren't necessarily a good thing either, but I think we took this one out.

So what would make a perfect burger? It has to be fresh. It should be juicy. It shouldn't be overly-greasy (but on the other hand, we need to remember we're eating hamburgers, and it comes with the territory a little), and... what? That's it? General happiness?

Once you get down to it, Sara and I are just going to be starting over. We're scraping what we've done so far, and we're going make a better list of criteria, and (re)rate everything.

Which leaves me asking, what's everyone's thoughts? Do we need more people doing the ratings so we can get a better average? That also means not doing them nearly as frequently because we'll have to coordinate more schedules. What makes a burger great?

Please, tell me your thoughts. I can't do it alone.