Kick off March Madness with the Burger Bracket. Vote on the best burger and fries in Indy

With March Madness right around the corner, everyone is about to become an amateur bracketologist. While your combination of historical knowledge and advanced analytics will almost certainly fail you long before the men’s and women’s NCAA Championships tipoff, there’s one bracket that only requires that you trust your gut — literally.

Today marks the beginning of IndyStar’s Burger and Fries Bracket Challenge. After gathering nominations from our readers, we have identified and seeded 16 Indianapolis-area burger restaurants for a single-elimination tournament. In four rounds throughout the next few weeks, you will be able vote for what you believe to be the best burger in town.

The voting process is straightforward: for each matchup in the form below, select the restaurant with the burger and fries you enjoy most. You can vote as many times as you want between Thursday morning and each Wednesday at noon.

Will over 100 years of burger craft propel the thin, lacy, piled-high patties at Working Man’s Friend across the finish line? Or will a new challenger, like the West Coast-style fare at California Burger, cut the proverbial nets?

With so many eateries to choose from, we followed a set of guidelines to narrow the field. They were as follows:

1. No major chains without Indiana roots. Name recognition goes a long way, and we don’t want to risk several small businesses splitting votes while a massive chain runs away with the win. I love a good Culver’s butter burger as much as the next guy, but we won’t be the outlet that crowns a Wisconsin-based chain as the best burger in Indianapolis. We let in spots like Bru Burger that are based in Indiana and came highly recommended by readers.

2. Preference is given to restaurants that specialize in burgers. With so many talented chefs in kitchens around Indianapolis, a burger is bound to end up on the menu at countless restaurants. While we didn’t explicitly rule out other restaurants that happen to sell a burger or two, we wanted our list to highlight places that primarily sell burgers.

Vote for the best burger and fries in Indianapolis

There’s a chance your favorite spot doesn’t appear on the bracket. If that’s the case, let me know at [email protected] so I can check it out. Indianapolis’ best burger will be crowned April 11th, and I’ll visit some locations on and off the bracket to see which of our readers I agree with.

For now, get voting in the poll below and be sure to share with the fellow burger fans in your life. I look forward to reporting the results.

Contact dining reporter Bradley Hohulin at [email protected]. You can follow him on Twitter/X @BradleyHohulin.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Vote for the best burger and fries in Indianapolis in our March Madness