efernandez@MiamiHerald.com

Hamburgers are basic. Beef simplified and practically digested. No bone. No outer strips or inner marbling of fat. Nothing but ground meat from rim to center.

Which is possibly why there's a need to cover them with cheese; slather them with ketchup, mustard and mayo; pile them high with lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles and possibly bacon and mushrooms.

I fix a pretty good burger at home, but there are times, usually when dining from a bar stool, that it just seems like the right thing to order. The question is: Where?

I wasn't necessarily looking for the most exquisitely prepared burger, though I wouldn't discount finesse. Nor the most fancifully garnished. Just the one that makes you say, "Now, that's a good burger." The burger of burgers. The ur-burger, that's what I was after.

My first stop was a popular Irish bar, where I ordered a cheeseburger to go with my pint of lager. It was big. It was filling. It was not memorable. There must be better, I thought. So I sallied forth.

Pascal's On Ponce, a fine French restaurant in Coral Gables, offers a burger stuffed with short-rib meat for lunch. (If that seems decadent, consider their foie gras-filled burger, an occasional special.)

Much as I love short ribs, this was one strange burger. A radical departure from my red-centered, medium-rare standard, it was pleasantly overdone (falling off the bone, except the bone was gone, of course) in the non-burger middle. It was tasty, if a bit disorienting, like so much "deconstructed" new cuisine that doesn't taste like what you expect.

Pursuing more fine lunching, I went to Atrio at the Conrad Hotel on Brickell for a Kobe burger. Pampered Japanese cattle supposedly yield the finest beef in the world, and this burger lived up to the hype. It was unbelievably juicy and flavorful, though the vulgarian in me wondered if there wasn't something sinful about turning massaged steers into ground beef on a bun.

Still on the up-market side, I drove to Smith & Wollensky on the Beach and had a burger at the bar. Yes, it was good, but somewhere in the transition from prime steak to burger, the steak-house magic had faded.

Was I aiming too high? After all, burgers are the staple of golden arches and fast-food kings. What made a burger worth wolfing down? Maybe it wasn't the product but the setting.

When my kids were little, my favorite burger joint was the Fuddruckers chain. They could run wild in the huge open spaces while dad sipped a badly needed drink at the bar. In that relaxed state, I loved their burgers.

With no little kids in tow, I went looking for the Fuddruckers outlet in Kendall, only to find that the owner had just dropped the franchise (its's now Amos Sports Grill) but kept the format. And kept the burgers as well.

I asked for the smallest, a hefty -1/3 pounder. Very nice; in fact, better than most. The proud staffers said the secret was the freshness of the meat, which they insisted was never frozen. These were chain burgers, or rather renegade burgers, at their best.

Oneburger in Coral Gables looks like a chain, albeit a trendy one, but isn't. The decor is minimalist-moderne, the menu -- 16 hamburgers plus a variety of non-beef and vegetarian patties -- is printed on the wall, and you order at a counter.

I ordered the barbecue burger, touched up with sauce and topped with applewood-smoked bacon. Excellent. So was the frita cubana, a surprising find. The American-size burger wasn't traditional (fritas are tiny), but the rich seasoning was the real item, as were the shoestring fries inside the bun.

Still, I hadn't found it. I shared my frustration with Alfredo Patiño, the young Venezuelan chef-owner of Bin No. 18 on Biscayne. Easy, he said. The best burger in town is right up the Boulevard, "next to Michy's."

A couple of evenings later, I stopped in front of chef Michelle Bernstein's emporium and looked in both directions. Finally, I spotted Kingdom, about two blocks south and across the street ("next to" being Venezuelan for "in the hood").

The joint was raucous fun, filled with Northern Corridor types in jeans and T-shirts drinking beer and socializing to the beat of very loud music.

I ordered the smallest burger, a huge half-pounder. There's a 12-ounce one, too, and a 24-ounce "Doomsday Burger" that you won't be charged for if you finish it (along with 10 ounces of fries and an equal portion of onion rings) in 15 minutes.

My relatively demure "Queenburger" was outstanding. Transcendent.

I could see no tricks. It looked just like a burger, with cheese, bacon and mushrooms -- toppings I'd chosen at other eateries. But it tasted incredible from the first bite to the last. Like magicians everywhere, owner Justin Hughes would not divulge his secret, other than to emphasize that the meat is never frozen.

As for the seductive -- addictive, even -- flavor, he spoke vaguely of "a seasoning we put in it and a blend of sauces; nothing unusual." I'd bet Worcestershire was among the sauces, but as for the rest, ¿quién sabe?

Only one customer has ever finished the Doomsday Burger, Hughes said. I'll stay with the Queen, thank you, machismo be damned. Kingdom may serve the ur-burger, but I want to live to chow down another day.

A SIDE OF HISTORY

The hamburger's origin is not just vulgar; it's gross. Fierce Mongolian horsemen of yore would put pieces of meat under their saddles, and the constant pounding as they galloped along, plundering and pillaging, softened it into an easy-to-chew mush.

Once gentrified, the Mongols' recipe would yield steak tartare (the X-treme rare burger), and ground-beef patty dishes like French fricadelles and American Salisbury steak. But mostly it gave us the great American burger. Ground beef in a bun with the works -- what in my pre-fast-food Florida youth we called hamburger "all the way."

Reviewed on April 9, 2007.