The Sheriff – Winner of the 2026 Burger Creativity Challenge

Some burgers you order out of habit. And then there’s The Sheriff.

This one wasn’t pulled from a mood board or a food TikTok trend. It was born in a kitchen, in Zurich Oerlikon, where an entire team gathered around one question: what do we put in this to win? Not to look good. To taste genuinely, deeply great.

Available as a limited edition from 1 May in all our restaurants across Switzerland, The Sheriff is the big winner of the 2026 Burger Creativity Challenge. And if you don’t know what that is yet – now’s the time.

The Burger Creativity Challenge: how it works

Once a year, Holy Cow! throws down a challenge to its restaurants: create the best burger you possibly can, and defend it. Every restaurant rallies together — the whole team around the table, or a group chosen to represent them — to build a unique recipe from scratch. Bun, protein, sauce, toppings: nothing is left to chance.

The burgers are then submitted to a blind tasting jury. No favouritism, no reputation playing a role: only taste decides. The winner gets their burger added to the national menu as a limited edition.

But there’s an extra dimension that few competitions have: if the burger truly resonates — if customers keep asking for it, if the numbers speak — it can leave limited-edition status and join the permanent menu. That’s exactly what happened with the Röstigraben, born from the same competition, and now a fixture on our menu as if it had always been there.

This year, the Challenge had a strong creative constraint: in partnership with Hugo Reitzel, a Swiss brand founded in 1860, every team had to incorporate Hugo products into their recipe. Pickles, onions… it was up to them to make it brilliant.

The team from Zurich Oerlikon took it all.

The Sheriff: a burger that means business

100% Swiss beef. Pastrami. Hugo pickle and onion mayonnaise. Vacherin fribourgeois AOP. Rocket. Batavia. Fresh bun.

On paper, it’s a list. In your mouth, it’s a construction.

The Swiss beef is the backbone — meaty, juicy. The pastrami arrives with its smoky, spiced richness, its long chew, that flavour that settles in and stays. And just when it’s about to become too generous, the Hugo mayo cuts right through it — the acidity of the pickles, the sharpness of the onions, a hit of freshness at exactly the right moment. The vacherin fribourgeois AOP melts slowly over everything, creamy, faintly nutty. The rocket and batavia bring the crunch and the vegetal balance. The toasted bun holds it all together without overpowering anything.

Every bite feels complete. No two bites are quite the same.

Ingredients that are there for a reason

The beef is 100% Swiss, traceable, carefully selected. The vacherin is AOP, made in the Swiss Romand region using centuries-old methods. Hugo Reitzel pickles and onions – a Swiss house founded in 1860 – are a flavour marker that many people recognise without being able to name it.

These aren’t marketing choices. They’re convictions Holy Cow! has held since day one, made tangible by the Burger Creativity Challenge with every edition. It’s a constraint that sparks creativity. The Sheriff is the proof.

Two months. Not one more. Unless you decide otherwise

1 May to 30 June 2026. That’s the window. After that, The Sheriff leaves the menu – unless you speak up loudly enough. That’s part of what this competition is about: customers have a say. The Röstigraben stayed because people demanded it. The Sheriff could follow the same path. Or not. But to find out, you have to try it first.

Dine in, click & collect via the Holy Cow! app or website, or order through our delivery partners.