(Another would-be member, Dave Powers, submitted a résumé, on which he bragged about indoctrinating his son in the Way of the Burger; perfecting his palate over 15 years in Washington, D.C., Iowa and Charlottesville, Va.; and, back in the late 1970’s, beating Eric Vopova at a middle school contest by eating “16 sliders in 5 minutes under the bleachers” without getting sick. Mr. Powers was accepted but quit when he moved to Oregon.)

BOTM began in the summer of 2005, when Adam Beckerman, 32, called up Brett Weiss and said, “Let’s go eat the world’s biggest burger.”

“Adam, when we were younger and he was still single, used to call me all the time and be like, ‘Let’s do ... ’ and he didn’t have to finish the sentence because I’d say yes,” Mr. Weiss explained.

At the time, the world’s biggest burger was a 15-pounder on offer at Denny’s Beer Barrel Pub in Clearfield, Pa., about a four-hour drive from New York. Mr. Beckerman and Mr. Weiss grabbed two other hungry guys, found a raggedy golf course nearby and made a day of it: They even printed commemorative “Best Day Ever” golf balls with a burger and a golf tee.

Then they came home and started eating half-pounders.

Members take turns picking burger destinations, which must be accessible by subway. Most do online research as well as a taste test, since a bad pick can bring humiliation. Once each has picked, whoever picked the group’s favorites gets to pick a second time  this is known as the playoffs  and the best of those wins the year.

(The 2008 crown is in dispute: Primehouse had the year’s top burger, but it was picked by Brett Weiss, who some believe back-doored his way into the playoffs upon Mr. Powers’s departure.)

At first, each member rated each place -2 to +4 on each of 13 factors, including cheese, bun, manageability, fries, shake, service and décor. That got replaced by an A-F report card-style scale in eight categories, including taste, value and returnability. By the end of the first year, the group had scratched all that and just ranked each burger against all the other burgers, constantly refining their individual and collective lists, which Brett Weiss meticulously compiles.