Five Guys burger today ---- meh

[grasswire]

First, the noise level was just deafening in the place. Employees hollering, loud fast music, surfaces that bounce noise.

Second, it was a grease bomb.

Third, the "ambience" feels like school cafeteria on the day before Xmas vacation. Frantic.

I know the chain is widely praised, but I was not impressed. It's easy to see that overhead is very very cheap, though, so I assume they are making lots of money.

[marmar]

1. Five Guys?

nt

[grasswire]

2. oh thank you

I'll correct my OP.

[UTUSN]

3. You got me at Points 1 & 3. I walked out, so will never know about #2.

How do they transplant the noise/atmosphere from one franchise location/town to another?!1 I mean, how do the customers in one locale know that a particular characteristic is acceptable to the chain?!1

[grasswire]

4. I haven't been to a Fuddruckers for a long time...

...but I do remember how comfortable and attractive those places were.

[Chan790]

13. I think that depends on the manager, site and locale.

The one nearest me is rough, dirty and dark. High ceilings, concrete floor, old wood walls, very few lights. It has the ambiance of some biker roadhouse...except with a fixin's bar of lettuce, tomato and BBQ sauce.

[Lucian]

5. Way overrated.

Kim Kardashian and her now ex-husband were at the Five Guys restaurant here in my town back in August.

We were so blessed. :sarcasm:

[seabeyond]

6. i had a mushroom swiss from chilis. yum. that best. but i hadnt eaten and it was 2 in afternoon

i had been up since 5. i was starving, lol

[Amerigo Vespucci]

7. Yeah, the noise level turned me off, too.

I've gone there on a few occasions for take-out, but I'd never sit there and have a meal.

Agree with the high school cafeteria thing too.

[kwassa]

8. true story, my last order of french fries before my heart attack was from 5 Guys.

Look at how the grease soaks through the paper bags the fries are served in.

The large size order has about 1500 calories. This is a side dish.

[grasswire]

9. oh greasy greasy fries!

I pinched one and it oozed oil. I brought them home and the dog wouldn't eat them. He usually likes a nosh of fries for a treat.

Your story is scary!

[Chan790]

11. They were recognized last year as having the most-unhealthy fries of any chain in America.

I'd have to pull out the study to be sure but I believe it was by a wide margin.

I rarely go in and order a large fry for lunch. Just a large seasoned fry. Douse the bag in malt vinegar.

It's usually the entirety of my eating for the day.

[pinniped]

10. I got a grilled cheese w/fries and a soda.

In N' Out is waaaaaaaaaay better.

[Chan790]

14. See that I'd dispute entirely.

I found In n' Out to be on par with a mediocre Wendy's. Not the well-managed Wendy's, the one in the ghetto where the staff is surly and the place barely runs and your food comes out room-temp looking like someone just flung the ingredients in the general direction of the foil-wrapper.

Given a choice between In n' Out and starving for 30 minutes until I could find something better, I'd choose the latter.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

15. That could describe Burger King too...

"the staff is surly and the place barely runs and your food comes out room-temp looking like someone just flung the ingredients in the general direction of the foil-wrapper...

I've only gone to Wendy's twice, and that was about 20 years ago...at the time I was intrigued by the fact that you could get a baked potato at the drive-through, but after a couple of them, I decided I'd rather make my own (or go somewhere else where they had a baked potato worth eating).

[Chan790]

12. Interesting.

The chain started here in DC and I've discovered that the farther one gets from DC the less "authentic" the experience gets.

Loud: Yes. It's the tiled walls. The place is loud even when it's almost empty. Music is outside company standards during rush times because they know the restaurant is loud, but it's rarely enforced. The place runs on order-calling ("shouting down the line" is an industry term). Knowing all this, I don't know why they don't throw some acoustic-dampening blocks in on the ceiling...it'd add about $1000 to the renovation of a space and dampen the noise by about 75%.

I don't eat meat so I wouldn't know. They have a great grilled cheese. The veggie melt isn't bad either as long as you realize they're using the same grill as they cook the burgers on. Grilled cheese is cooked with the buns, away from the meat.

I dunno. I don't think the ambiance is any worse than McDonalds, most "sports bars" or most public venues in Columbia Heights/Adams Morgan, DC. It's a madhouse but so is everything around here.

[bif]

16. Any place that can't serve a medium-rare burger loses me

I know, it isn't safe to eat a burger that's pink on the inside. So have the customer sign a waiver or something. Nothing worse than a well done burger. I wasn't impressed either.

[Chan790]

19. you can't eat a hamburger in DC then.

It's a health code violation with possible license-revocation consequences here in DC to serve a even-slightly-rare burger.

No place can serve you a burger rarer than medium-well. (technically, the law is medium but the medium burger you get will be medium-well...brownish--faint-pink)

I don't eat meat anymore but I can empathize, my father believes that hamburgers should be dry and shoe-tough.

[Lance_Boyle]

23. Just go to 'Southern DC,' aka Northern VA.

Get your burger cooked any way you want it. I recently discovered that in NC, which shares the abominable "it's gotta be cooked medium or higher" law, as long as the establishment grinds its beef on-premises daily you can have your burger cooked how you like it. This is good for those of us who like to taste something resembling *beef* in our burgers. I like mine room-temp-red on the inside. That's how a burger ought to be.

[Yavin4]

17. I Was in iHop in SF. Patron Complained About the Loud Music.

Staff told her that the CD player was locked up in the mgt office, and the mgr had gone home. There was no way that they could turn it off.

Patron left her dinner party and walked out.

[miyazaki]

18. meh is right. peanuts and hamburgers? c'mon.

over priced grease bag. also my location placed the fountain drinks
right near the toilets.

[Mojambo]

20. Gotta get that stuff to go.

Also, less is more at Five Guys. If you get the burger with the works the bun will literally disintegrate before you get a chance to eat it. Very messy.

[grasswire]

22. I had the small burger with just four things on it

Mayo, lettuce, pickle and onion (well, they forgot the onion so it was just three things)

I always take the top bun off to cut the carbs. Grease was running all over the place. I'm not sure how they get it so greasy! If I am making a burger I'm using 80-20 meat. Maybe they are using 70-30 or worse.

[MiddleFingerMom]

21. I was horribly disappointed the two times I tried In-and-Out burgers (in AZ and CA)...

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... and have been SORELY tempted by the hype over Five Guys (which has the
exact same flavor as the hype about In-and-Out).
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I won't bother. Thanks, everybody!!!
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Fuddruckers was VERY good (though relatively expensive). Red Robin usually
places highly in our local "Best Of" competitions.
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The words "charcoal-grilled" and "Worcestershire" usually make me happy.
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.

[quakerboy]

25. red robin? really?

I find them to be the worst of the worst in their price range. Inconsistent on a good day. One batch of fries will be undercooked, still hard, the next fried to a cinder. Same thing with the burgers. I see the people working there, almost always kids, and I do not trust their food handling with my life. So I order the burger well done. Every damn time, it comes out undercooked. Even when I repeat that I want it fully done. Plus tasteless card-boardy burger. I like the flavor of meat, so I generally get burgers without a billion condiments and additions, so that can shine. Which it does not at RR.

But that's just me. I would do Fudd's over RR any 9 days out of the week

I find 5 guys to be ok. There are better and worse. I would liken the food quality and style to In-n-Out. Decent, edible. Not worth wearing T shirts about, or driving out of my way for. But a cut above Mcdonalds. The 5-guys in this area are not so loud as described. Of course Ive rarely seen more than a couple people in them here.

[Kali]

26. I've only tried in and out and 5 guys once each

and to be fair M brought the in and out burgers here from Tucson so they were a solid hour old at least, but even allowing for that 5 guys was WAY better.

Fuddruckers was OK but too expensive, never tried red robin.

best burgers not homemade I ever had were from the Chuckbox in Tempe, I have been informed they are gone now. Even less reason for mr to ever go up there anymore.

[OriginalGeek]

24. THAT'S NOT GREASE! THAT'S JUICE!

lol.

But I love 5 Guys. Best burger in town.

And I can watch them make it.

Gives me the illusion that I have some control over their cleanliness.

We go for lunch a couple times a month (any more than that and we would be working from our suite in intensive care) and usually just split one order of fries between a couple or 3 of us.

Cheeseburger with:
Lettuce
Mayo
A1 steak sauce
mushrooms
jalapeno peppers.

The trick is to leave most of it in the foil while eating. And Hell Yes to the malt vinegar on the fries.

we could go to BK or MCD or Wendy's and get cheaper food but not by that much and I don't care what y'all think - 5 Guys is light years better than what those frozen patty peddlers produce.

Noise doesn't bother me and I often like the songs and at least ours doesn't have drinks next to the pisser (I can't argue against that one - that's just gross lol)

I've never had a tough, dry burger there. I've never gotten food poisoning there. The flavor is tops and worth the couple extra dollars over shitty BK or McDonalds or Wendys. I've never had an In n Out burger but I have had Hardees and they always seemed similar in my mind but I dunno. I'd try it if I got out west.

Fuddruckers is a pretty place but even more expensive and no better in flavor. Red Robin was a spectacularly mediocre burger but they have beer so I didn't notice as much. (They weren't terrible but after all the hype I've heard about them for years when I finally got one it was disappointing. Bread was flavorless and the meat wasn't any better than anyone else's and the fixins where all show and no flavor.)

5 Guys just does 3 things - burgers, fries and a pretty good hot dog - and I think they do those things better than anyone else out there. It is definitely an unhealthy indulgence but I'm going for a burger, not a veggie plate. I go for veggie plates on other days.

[Kat45]

27. I went to one for the first time recently.

I thought the burger wasn't bad, but I wouldn't even touch the fries because they were pretty much a big pile of grease.

[Skittles]

28. I like the food but cannot stand the atmosphere

too noisy