The residents and visitors of Stanford, Calif. enjoy a range of dining options within the grounds of the world’s second-largest contiguous university campus. It is therefore with the utmost humility that I attempt to contribute to your understanding of this culinary landscape, as I talk about the burgers at Stanford.

There are far more hamburgers to be found at Stanford than meet the eye. Every dining hall offers a variant of the Stanford Dining Burger. The Alumni Café has a burger on Thursdays. Numerous concession stands sell hamburgers during athletic contests. Schwab Executive Services and other catering companies produce burgers for private, unpublicized events, presenting challenges to data collection. In addition, football weekends bring in legions of tailgaters who grill their own meats in an uncontrolled environment. That said, I have reached a few conclusions about Stanford burgers.

As I remember last year’s offerings from Manzanita and Wilbur, they reflect the range of burgers found at undergrad dining halls. The ingredients were mediocre but satisfying, and for the most part students were happy to have what they considered a truly acceptable burger in the convenience of their dining halls. Typically nondescript, these burgers were sometimes enhanced at Wilbur when they appeared as grill specials, with the addition of chipotle aioli, bacon, mushrooms or grilled onions. In particular, the bison burger at Wilbur was legendary. Manzanita cooked its patties beforehand and simply reheated, as was readily apparent from the tray of moist, grayish cooling patties behind the serving counter; if Wilbur did the same, it was less transparent about the practice. The difference showed, though not as much as one might expect. I assume most dining hall burgers today are similarly unremarkable, falling somewhere within the Manzanita-Wilbur spectrum.

The Axe and Palm presents an interesting case study in the commercialization of school spirit. In an effort to capitalize on the recent success of the football team, a football-themed redesign has been in place for a couple years now. A panoramic photo of the gridiron taken from field level covers an entire wall, giving a bizarre impression of being on the sidelines of a game frozen in time. Stylized images of Toby Gerhart and Andrew Luck in action or surrounded by band members blanket all remaining surfaces, except for a few framed Daily articles chronicling great moments in Stanford Axe history and an enormous scoreboard emblazoned with a “Big Game Countdown” that could have been displayed in a quarter of the space. Burgers have names like The Axe, The Touchdown, The Big Game and The Heisman, and they are not too good. The meat has a slimy exterior and little taste, and is accompanied by a soggy wilted lettuce leaf. If you don’t specify otherwise, they might pawn off a cold whole wheat bun on you.

Despite all of this, some Stanford students appear to think highly of The Axe and Palm. Several of the people I asked named TAP as the best burger joint on campus. They were usually not overly enthusiastic about it, suggesting that they may not have known the extent of other options, but they named TAP nevertheless. Enlightened palates might question their loyalties, but TAP’s place in undergraduate cultural life may well be affecting students’ perceptions of its quality.

Like TAP, the Treehouse has a claim to being a campus institution, which it leverages through burger names such as The Cardinal and The Axe. Their burgers are better than The Axe and Palm’s–they have to be, since the Treehouse cannot rely on meal plan dollars to stay in business. While certainly enjoyable, the burgers are hardly life-changing.

I also encourage you to explore some of the lesser-known, out-of-the-way burger options at Stanford. One has to admit that Russo Café at Munger, while a vaguely elitist café, serves a solid burger special. Even better, there is Tootsie’s, an Italian lunch spot on the corner of Stanford Shopping Mall next to the Medical School. They serve a fancy burger made of veal, pork and beef with good shoestring fries.

There are still many Stanford burgers I’ve never had, so go out and try them all. Make sure to let me know what I’ve missed.

Questions, comments, suggestions, anonymous tip-offs? Contact Jeff at [email protected].