Ina Garten on the TODAY Show on Tuesday, October 1, 2024. | Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty Images The cookbook queen crowns one Georgetown burger as the all-time best It’s safe to say Ina Garten knows her food. And she just dubbed a D.C. restaurant’s cheeseburger the best she’s ever had. The famous cookbook author and TV chef, 76, made an appearance Tuesday night at the Kennedy Center to kick off the tour for her new memoir, Be Ready When The Luck Happens. She dished on her former career working in the White House and living in a Dupont Circle rowhouse. And when an audience member asked a question about where she’s had the best-ever cheeseburger, Garten gave a surprisingly local answer. “I had it this afternoon: It was in the Four Seasons. Is it called Bourbon Steak? Oh my god,” she said with a commendatory laugh. Jennifer Chase Photography Bourbon Steak’s prime steak burger with aged white cheddar, red wine shallot compote, and little gem lettuce. Bourbon Steak currently offers two cheeseburgers on their lunch menu — a prime steak burger with aged white cheddar ($26) and a wagyu double burger with American cheese ($28). The restaurant declined to share which one Garten ordered, but looking at her taste in her own recipes, we’re willing to bet she opted for white cheddar over American cheese. “Chef Garten just declared us the best cheeseburger she’s ever had — what a compliment,” Quentin Welch, executive chef at Bourbon Steak, told Eater. “As a long-time admirer of her work, it’s truly humbling to know we made such a lasting impression on her.” Located inside the Four Seasons hotel in Georgetown, restaurateur Michael Mina’s Bourbon Steak offers a cool contemporary steakhouse vibe with dry-aged Japanese wagyu and a decadent duck fat fry trio. It’s just a five-minute drive from the Kennedy Center, where Garten headed to later that day for an interview with Nashville-based author Ann Patchett. Before Garten became famous for her Westhampton Beach-based Barefoot Contessa specialty food store, she and husband Jeffrey lived in the D.C. area in the ‘70s, while Ina worked on nuclear policy and Jeffrey dealt with economic policy for the White House. While she’s no longer a D.C. resident (she said Tuesday that she loved living in D.C. but moved to the Hamptons to “have fun”), Garten has since returned to visit the nation’s capital. In 2016, she taped a “Barefoot in Washington, D.C.” television special, which featured stops at Georgetown’s French bakery Patisserie Poupon, vegetarian taco spot Chaia, José Andrés’s cocktail bar Barmini, and the White House for tea with then-First Lady Michelle Obama. “When I lived in Washington, it was all about power lunches and steak and potatoes,” she said in the episode. “But now, Washington is one of the food capitals of the country.”