When you spend a month ranking San Antonio’s Top 10 burgers (and its five worst), you discover that the city’s burgerverse defies easy categorization.

What to do with a really good Mexico-based burger chain when you’re keeping the list local? Or a burger trailer outside a bar fighting the good fight against equipment failure and the elements? Or a really bad burger at an otherwise OK bar and grill on Broadway?

You find those burgers a list of their own, a list that folds in the best and worst of a month researching not just burgers  but good breakfast spots, bad Shiner beer seasonals, honky-tonk chicken-fried steak and two novel ways to do chicken and waffles right — and one way to do it all wrong.

APRIL’S BEST AND WORST: Pizza, puffy tacos and bad barbecue 

The best

Cheeseburger at Cuarto de Kilo: The smell of mesquite charcoal shrouds you the second you walk in the door, and you can see the grill doing its fiery work, a circular grate revolving like the wheel of time, if that wheel revolved around burgers the way it does for the people on the photo wall who beat the “Bestia Challenge” by putting away two burgers in one sitting. This Mexican burger chain arrived in San Antonio about a year ago. It’s a spartan place with a simple menu: just fries and rings and four burgers, starting plain and going up through cheese, bacon and guacamole. Cuarto De Kilo translates to half a pound, and the mesquite takes about 15 minutes to work its way to a juicy medium. They dress your burger like you would at your own backyard burger party: giant sesame seed bun, mustard, mayo, ketchup, and more lettuce, tomatoes and onions than one bun could possibly hold. It’s gloriously sloppy and hard to handle. Just like you. 12411 Bandera Road, Suite 108, 210-263-9228, cuartodekilo.us 

Fried Chicken & Latke Waffle at The Hayden: The waffle iron is a helluva tool. Before the George Foreman grills and the panini presses and the Ronco Super Snacker, the waffle iron was there to compress and cook anything you could fit into its checkerboard jaws. The Hayden understands, and its Jewish-deli-meets-Southern-diner aesthetic makes room for a latke pressed in that waffle iron for chicken and waffles equally comfortable at both of those tables, a hybrid electrified by matzo breading that gives the chicken tenders a snap-crackle pop beneath a warm blanket of stewed apples and apple syrup. 4025 Broadway, 210-437-4306, thehaydensa.com; also at 10003 NW Military Highway, Suite 2115, 210-600-3598

Hey Bird! ice cream cone at Pullman Market: “The flavor of this chicken is screaming to me that it needs to be something sweet.” That’s the origin story of chef Tavel Bristol-Joseph’s ice cream spin on chicken and waffles at the new Pullman Market at Pearl. The Hey Bird! cone at the market’s ice cream counter combines ice cream fortified by chicken stock from the market’s butcher counter with a crispy waffle cone that incorporates roasted chicken skin. The stock amplifies the richness of the ice cream without hijacking the flavor, and the cone’s like pulling together the crispy snowflake shag that falls from a piece of honey-fried chicken. 221 Newell Ave. at Pearl, 210-759-0086, pullmanmarket.com

Wagyu burger at EastSide Provisions: For those of us who started our careers flipping burgers, we can appreciate the kind of day Mark Garcia was having at his EastSide Provisions trailer outside Bruno's Dive Bar in Southtown. His fryer had just gone down,  another piece of equipment had blown up in his face, and he was trying to  open all at the same time. None of that affected the quality of his wagyu cheeseburger, a simple work of art with a fat wad of beef not quite smashed all the way to smashburger on the grill, then built up with pickles that Garcia makes himself, onions he chops with the lightning fury of a trained chef, then a schmear of roasted garlic and Duke’s mayo, all of that on a bun baked for him by the nearby Blush Bakery, a bun he calls “brioche-adjacent.” For everything that you give up in formality, for all of the wind and the heat and the bugs and the traffic, you gain it all back in a burger that reminds you why you love burgers in the first place. Those simple ingredients balance each other like a Cirque du Soleil act, appropriate for the circus of nightlife and daylight on South Alamo Street. Parked at Bruno’s Dive Bar, 1004 S. Alamo St., eastsideprovisionstx.com

MAKE ME ONE WITH EVERYTHING: 10 best burgers in San Antonio

Sticky bun at The Newstand: You might say I like The Newstand because it fosters the idea of reading newspapers, something in which I have a vested interest. And you’d be right. But the much broader reason I like this new coffee and sandwich shop from Page Pressley and Dez Rodriguez is for the craft that goes into something as fundamental as a morning sticky bun. This big block of fluff and circumstance begins as a 4-foot roll of pastry dough brought to life by dark brown sugar, brown butter, cinnamon and cream cheese frosting. It commands the morning table like a fresh loaf of bread, a great way to get to know this new Broadway hangout, sitting there with bad headlines and a good cappuccino. 1900 Broadway, Suite 106, 210-459-9779, thenewstandtx.com 

Chicken-fried steak at Spechts Texas: On the first day San Antonio hit 100 degrees, we sat on the big fan-cooled pavilion behind Spechts Texas and watched two of our best friends dance to a Santana cover by the rock band Evolution. We drank dressed Modelos, watched the sunset and moved on to the main event: chicken-fried steak. This old country store turned rocky-tonk bar and grill has seen a lot of changes in its hundred years on the edge of Comal County. But that chicken-fried steak is as reliable as those friends on the dance floor. Tender-hearted, crisp and collected on the outside, covered in cream gravy. The steak, not the friends. 112 W. Specht Road, 830-438-1888, barandgrillsanantonio.com

Bagel and lox sandwich at Max & Louie’s New York Diner. Breakfast doesn’t have to be a table-sprawling event. Sometimes you just want a nice everything bagel with some lox and a cup of coffee. Even in this full-contact New York diner from veteran San Antonio restaurateur Drew Glick, the moment can draw in and focus on that one thing, done really well. The bagel’s from Brooklyn — it’s the water; the water’s different — but it’s baked at Max & Louie’s, then layered with the silkiest brined salmon west of the Mississippi, and a supporting cast of tomatoes, red onions, capers and cream cheese. I feel like I’m back home, and I’m not even from there. 226 W. Bitters Road, Suite 126, 210-483-7600, maxandlouiesdiner.com

WELCOME TO NOTHINGBURGER: San Antonio’s 5 worst burgers

The worst

Bean burger at The Broadway 5050: Loud, crowded and messy. We like our bars like that. And sometimes we like our burgers like that. The 5050 is good at that kind of burger, the one with everything everywhere all at once. But the bean burger at 5050 is a mess in all the wrong ways, a dense and dry example of trying too hard — or not hard enough — to interpret a San Antonio classic. Broken tortilla chips and a spackle of refried beans on a hard-cooked hamburger patty with cheese and onions doesn’t say San Antonio. It says I give up. 5050 Broadway, 210-832-0050, broadway5050.com 

Chicken and waffle flight at the Magnolia Pancake Haus: To visit Magnolia Pancake Haus is to join the eternal waitlist. Doesn’t matter what time, doesn’t matter what day, you’re destined to wait awhile for your table in a lunchroom decorated like discount Dollywood, waiting for the pancake supply to catch up with the pancake demand. But the menu also extends to a chicken and waffle flight that sounds like a theme park ride, so what could I do? Except maybe don’t. A miniature waffle infused with cheddar cheese and another with green onions tasted like lab experiments gone wrong, and the more approachable bacon waffle came out as salty as a handful of bacon bits at a buffet salad bar. The pecan waffle did its job, but all four were shackled by toothpicks to flat, greasy chicken nuggets. It’s a novelty dish at a steadfastly old-fashioned place, so maybe I got exactly what I deserved. And less. 10333 Huebner Road, 210-496-0828, more locations at magnoliapancakehaus.com 

Shiner Peach Wheat beer: I was one of the early adopters of Shiner Bock as the flagship cheap beer of Texas, a beer so much better than that Lone Star swill. It’s not cheap anymore, and it’s not just Shiner Bock anymore. The Spoetzl Brewery positions itself as a full-speed craft brewery these days, with seasonals including Shiner Shandy, !Orale Limon¡ and Tex Hex Passion Fruit IPA. But here’s the thing: Through all its iterations beyond bock, for all the Bohemian Blacks and Oktoberfests and Ruby Red Grapefruits, I never felt like they lived up to the smart packaging and big ideas. I hoped I was wrong about Shiner Peach Wheat. I wasn’t. Shiner Peach is for people who drink seltzer and vape at the same time, because this tastes like that. Grapefruit White Claw, meet Elf Bar apple peach. Can I get another Shiner Bock over here? Suggested price $10.99, shiner.com