Five Guys Burgers and Fries

Dobro and I hit up Five Guys at Northgate the other day and it's a place that I've always been wanting to hit up since I read about them in an article posted on Digg. So how did my experience there go?

Read On...

Have you ever seen any advertising about this place? You'd be hard pressed to find any because they are all about the food. Instead of spending money on print and commercials, they let their product speak for itself and let word of mouth get their burgers out there. Even the restaurants are pretty spartan, with the same simple red and white checker pattern in each one. That's what I like about Five Guys. They know they have a good thing on the menu and let their food do the talking.

They take great pains to make sure that the food there is always fresh. Each day the buns are either trucked or flown in from a nearby bakery so the bread is never more than a day old. They cut all their fries and grind all the meat on site. Every patty on the griddle is freshly hand made, and they don't even have freezers to store their meat. All their toppings are locally sourced as well.

So how can they keep this level of quality and keep the same prices? Well, they don't keep the same prices. In keeping with the highest quality, if it takes more money to get a top product they actually pass it on to their customers. One day their burger might cost $4, the next week $6, so expect their food to come down this summer when tomatoes and lettuce are actually in season.

I wanted to get the full effect of this place so I decided to get a bacon cheeseburger with everything (Mayo, Relish, Onions, Lettuce, Pickles, Tomatoes, Grilled Onions, Grilled Mushrooms, Ketchup, Mustard) and BBQ sauce. Dobro and I split some fries and I got an Arnold Palmer to drink. How does it taste?

Three words: OM NOM NOM. It's a pretty damn good burger and each of the fresh ingredients really come through. No one topping is overpowering and each bite is pretty balanced. Not greasy at all and full of meaty flavor. I'm usually not a fan of American Cheese, but in this application I'll make an exception. They really can do a burger right.

The fries were pretty good too. Fluffy, light, not greasy, perfectly salted. They weren't crispy though, but they were good for this style of fry.

I definitely like this place as far as chain restaurants go. Five Guys aims to give one of the best burger experiences out there and they succeed. It's definitely a corporate place, but it doesn't have the taste of processing that other fast food places have. Just good simple burgers. Maybe that's what gets me the most. They refuse to sacrifice quality, even if it means taking a hit in their profit margins.

Five Guys doesn't claim to be more than what they know, and if you want a pure unadulterated burger experience you should swing by Northgate and try Five Guys out.