In a city like Hattiesburg with several well-known and well-loved burger establishments, it’d be pretty hard to single out one restaurant as having the best burger in the Hub City, much less in the entire state.
But Ed’s Burger Joint on Hardy Street recently took home that honor, being named the best burger restaurant in Mississippi by the travel website TripAdvisor.
“Our entire team is honored and excited by this recognition,” said Ed’s owner Robert St. John, who also owns Branch, Purple Parrot Café, Tabella, Mahogany Bar, The Midtowner and Midtown Donut. “It’s always good to see when the hard work and effort of the staff and managers is recognized, especially with TripAdvisor.
“I do a lot of traveling and I use TripAdvisor all the time because they’re so accurate and reliable with their results.”
TripAdvisor, which named the top-rated burger restaurants in every state, based the rankings on the site’s user reviews. The rankings accounted for ratio and quality of the burger reviews compared to overall ratings, as well as quality and quantity of reviews received over the past year as of May.
Featured restaurants were required to have a minimum of four out of five ratings “bubbles,” at least 100 reviews and 10 locations or less as of June.
According to TripAdvisor’s website, Ed’s Burger Joint has 4.5 ratings “bubbles” and 143 reviews. Of those reviews, 77 (55 percent) are Excellent, 46 (32 percent) are Very Good, 17 (11 percent) are Average and three (2 percent) are Poor.
Ed’s ratings “bubbles” consist of four for service, four for value and 4.5 for food. TripAdvisor ranks the restaurant as No. 6 of 222 Hattiesburg restaurants featured on the site.
St. John opened Ed’s Burger Joint in January 2016 at 3800 Hardy St. in Midtown Market. As its name implies, the restaurant offers several varieties of burgers, including The Jam Burger, The Blue Burger, The El Magooey and The Ed’s Deluxe.
There’s also a selection of fries, onion rings, tater tots and nachos, along with unique milkshakes like Cap’n Crunch, Blueberry Cheesecake, Elvis ’77 and the Chocolate Motherlode. The restaurant also offers an outdoors area with activities like bocce ball, cornhole and ping pong.
