While Super Duper makes a perfectly decent, if greasy, under-$10 burger, I've got to take this opportunity to call out the Business Times and their poorly conceived Bay Area food bracket thing, which they appear to be doing as click-bait in the wake of the success of FiveThirtyEight's national burrito bracket. The trouble is, instead of comparing burritos with burritos, the Business Times' bracket is ultimately going to be forcing readers to choose between burgers and beer, and between coffee and ice cream, which is just stupid.

Also, how did somebody think that making a competition that was all about burgers, beer, coffee, and ice cream would in any way represent the plethora of amazing food and drink in the Bay Area? There's only one savory, edible item in the mix! And what sense does it make to pit burgers up against beer, and then ultimately up against coffee or ice cream? That's like taking a vote to see which is more important: sleeping, eating, or having sex? It's like putting up pictures of cute toddlers in Halloween outfits, cute puppies, pizza, and a car crash, and asking people to click on only one.

This all started two months ago, and the burger quadrant is now finished, with a reported 800 votes that came in that crowned Super Duper the winner, over In-n-Out. But how did the initial nominees even make it on this list? That's totally unclear. But someone over there came up with 16 burgers they thought were the best (including things like The Counter, which isn't even in SF, and Burger Joint which is just plain bad) and pitted them one against another in 8 "matches." We wound up with Super Duper pitted against In-n-Out, but of course there are at least 20 good restaurant burgers that were left out of the mix completely — where the hell is 4505 Burgers & BBQ, Bourbon Steak, Maven, Zuni, or Nopa for god's sake? I would demand a recount if the entire thing weren't so badly curated as to be just totally useless.

The theme with these votes is that locally grown, unpretentious brands are beating out other, fancier or non-local brands. Thus Philz Coffee has been judged the best coffee over places like Blue Bottle, and in another useless vote, readers will be choosing whether Philz is "better" than It's-It ice cream sandwiches this week. Then Super Duper will square off against whatever is voted the best beer.

And the winner will be: french fries!

Anyway, congratulations to Super Duper for besting In-n-Out among Business Times readers. And the Business Times people should perhaps stick to reporting on tech and downtown developers and steer clear of food brackets in future.