Five Guys Burgers and Lies

When visiting a Five Guys restaurant one must accept the sloppy beauty of it all from the way they store their pallets of bulk food in the dining area to their food  presentation. I have not heard more hype about any other burger place than I have about Five Guys, except maybe In & Out (whom I have yet to review. Soon.) But it seems, at least from the chatter that I hear, that Five Guys is on course to reach nearly equal awareness. Everyone loves Five Guys, and for good reason.

Five guys serves only a few things on their menu, however, the few things they serve are done nearly to perfection. Also, with every burger or hot dog you order you get all the toppings you want for free. But if you ask me the toppings aren't exactly free. At 7 dollars a burger. . . you're paying for the toppings, no matter what they say.

As you wait for your number to be called be sure to help yourself to complimentary salted peanuts and enjoy the scenery as well which, like I said, is always a bit of a mess, albeit and intentional one. Every Five Guys I've visited likes to store their pallets stacked with 50 pound bags of potatoes and boxes of peanuts in the dining area mixed between the tables and chairs, and no one seems to show any real concern about it or to know why. The giant bags of potatoes and boxes of peanuts look like they might be for sale but I honestly don't know that fact either. My thought is perhaps the first Five Guys restaurant, well before it was a household name, was forced to store their pallets of food in the dining area simply because they didn't have the storage space to store all the stuff in the back. However, with the amount of success and popularity they have now I'm pretty sure this is done more now out of tradition than necessity. But again, no one really knows.

As always, your burger and fries will be served to you in a very unorganized manner in an authentic greasy paper bag. Your fries will be served in a dixie cup but most of them will be scattered at the bottom of the grease bag. If you look closely at our receipt in the photo to the right (that is if you can divert your eye's from my wife's hypnotic gaze and the strange gang sign she's flashing) you can see what we ordered. I ordered the bacon cheeseburger of course because . . . bacon. For toppings I chose mayo, lettuce, tomato, grilled onions, and mushrooms. My wife must have been in a weird mood because out of the array of toppings she had to choose from she picked only grilled onions and ketchup. I tried to tell my wife that rather than getting ketchup on her burger she could simply just empty a sugar packet on a tomato slice but she didn't got for it. (I could go on a tangent about ketchup right now but Ill save that for another post, needless to say I'm not a big fan.) But to be fair it actually tasted pretty good but would have been even better with only the grilled onions and little-to-no ketchup.

The burgers at Five Guys are very very good. If I had to use one adjective to describe them it would be 'juicy'. They don't skimp on toppings and their meat is not lean, no sir not by a long shot. Just the way I like it. But good burgers are never lean, never ever ever. This particular day their bacon was dry and nearly burnt, that was a bit of a disappointment.
When it comes to their peanut oil fried french fries I think they may have been having an off day on this particular Saturday because they were not very good, which shocked me because everyone absolutely raves about their fries and I seem to remember amazing fries the few times I've been there in the past. Not today though, and now I am confused as to whether or not my memory serves me right or if I've just been fooling myself and following the crowd. This less than great experience with their fries is why I refer to them as 'lies' in the title. . . Get it? I thought it was clever anyway. As you can see from the photo below, their fries were SOGGY, and as we all know I like my fries on the crispy side. I know this fry review will cause a bit of a scandal among loyal Five Guys patrons because everyone loves their fries, but like I said, it may have been an off day. That, or they've been fooling us all. 

(Yes, if you noticed, I am missing part of my little finger, it does not affect my burger-ing though I swear.)

I know a lot of critics like to give purely objective reviews and don't like to compare one establishment to another but the purpose of this blog is to find the best burger after all so I'll keep a running score. First of all, Scaddy's bacon is never crunchy or burnt and the Wayne burger is bigger than Five Guy's so you get more bang for your 7 bucks and I have to say, I think the Wayne burger tastes a bit better too even without all the extra trimmings, but it's real close. Also, I am not a stickler on food presentation especially when it comes to burgers, but if it were a beauty contest Scaddy's would win hands down. 

When it comes to the fries it's hard to say, but based on my unforgivably soggy experience at Five Guys I'd have to give the trophy to Scaddy's as well. I can taste the potential of the Five Guys fries and I think they beat Scaddy's on seasoning but I just can't excuse the sogginess. But I'll be sure to try Five guy's again at a different location to see if this was a fluke or not.