The World's Biggest Burger Belongs To A Sports Bar In Detroit, Michigan

Sports bars may not seem like the expected locale for culinary innovation, but without these institutions, we wouldn't have mozzarella sticks, Buffalo wings, or many other beloved fried foods. A cold beer and bar snack combine to create a spiritual comfort blanket perfect for easing the existential pain of watching your favorite team get crushed, again. So it should be no surprise that a sports bar in championship-starved Detroit created the world's biggest commercially sold burger.

The enormous burger weighs in at nearly 1,800 pounds and can be found at Mallie's Sports Grill and Bar. The burger's origin story started when owner Steven Mallie put a 10-pound burger on the menu. Little did anybody know that this already large burger would be the seed that eventually grew into the monstrosity available today. By 2008, Mallie had set a Guinness World Record by crafting a 138-pound burger. But heavy lies the crown, and soon Mallie had been unseated as the world burger champion. Losing the title lit a fire inside the bar owner's belly and after a few years of work and preparation, in 2017 Mallie set the record for the world's largest commercially sold burger.

To give you some idea of how gigantic this burger is, Mallie's previous record-holder would make up only a little more than 7% of the current champion. In other words, the biggest burger anybody had ever seen back in 2008 would barely register as more than a bite or two of this giant. To quote Keanu Reeves — whoa!

Unlike many of the world's most notably large food items, you can actually order this burger at Mallie's Sports Grill and Bar. They're going to need three days' advance notice, and you're going to need $7,799 and one heck of an appetite. When the burger was first made in 2017 a large crowd was on hand to devour the behemoth but they still ended up with copious leftovers, which were turned into taco meat and chili, and distributed to shelters so none of it would be wasted. Anyone who tries to tackle this monster is going to need a massive crew — perhaps the whole neighborhood over for a tailgate — to even put a dent into it.

The statistics behind this burger are almost too much to believe. Since this is a Detroit-based sports bar, let's look at the burger through that lens. We start with 2,000 pounds of meat, which is roughly double the weight of the Pistons' starting five. The bun, which is baked by the Michigan Bread Company, weighs in at about 250 pounds. That's about the same weight as Tigers All-Star pitcher Tarik Skubal. You can't have a burger without some toppings, and this bad boy comes loaded with 300 pounds of lettuce, onions, tomatoes, pickles, and cheese. Or, to put it another way, a Detroit Lions starting center Frank Ragnow amount of condiments. Mallie's deserves a spot on any road trip to the best burger spots in the U.S.