[caption id="attachment_941" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The perfect cheeseburger?"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/20110314_5.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-941" title="20110314_5" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/20110314_5-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" /></a>[/caption]

I don't remember exactly who I knew who said it, but one of the cliched quests when I was younger was guys who said their life's dream was finding the perfect cheeseburger.

Since we couldn't find the perfect cheerleader, food was the next best thing.

So the search.

The first thing to remember is that not everyone has good taste, or even any taste at all. When I was working in Southern California, our newspaper used to run a yearly survey honoring the best things in the area. Even though we lived in an area with great authentic Mexican food, our readers decided that the second-best tacos in the area could be found at Taco Bell.

So if somebody tells you the best cheeseburger comes from a fast-food chain, you can generally figure they haven't gotten around much.

Folks who grew up in the Southland swear by <a title="In-N-Out Burgers" href="http://www.in-n-out.com/default.asp" target="_self">In-N-Out Burgers</a>, and when it comes to fast food, they're definitely top quality. A relatively new chain in the Washington, D.C., area, <a title="Five Guys" href="http://www.fiveguys.com/home.aspx" target="_self">Five Guys</a>, is pretty good too. But they're still just fast food.

The two best cheeseburgers I ever had, I had to go all the way to Hawaii to get them.

Second best was Jimmy Buffett's Cheeseburger in Paradise restaurant in Lahaina, on the island of Maui. That shouldn't come as any surprise. Buffett and his song practically created the mystique around cheeseburgers, so you would expect that ones sold in his name would probably have to be pretty special.

And so they were, but they weren't quite the best.

The best were a couple of islands over, on the garden island of Kauai. When we went to Hawaii in 1998, we stayed just north of Kapaa. We went to Bubba's one night, fascinated by the name and the chance for some great burgers. You've got to love a joint whose motto is "We cheat tourists, drunks and attorneys."

They had great cheeseburgers, too, and if I ever make it back to Kauai, I'll be sure and stop in for another one.

It's a long way to go for a cheeseburger, but hey, we are talking about the best cheeseburger in the world.