Many of my fellow Yelpers have lost their damned minds. Five Guys didn't just come to California to sell burgers, or to compete with In-N-Out; they came to do missionary work. Y'all best recognize.
Also, since Five Guys is a chain, pretty much the same from one store to the next, my review for the Parkway Plaza unit is mostly a knockoff of one I wrote for Five Guys Hillcrest. If they can copy and clone, so can I.
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A while back, Men's Health Magazine included Five Guys Burgers and Fries in their lists of "Worst Burgers" and "Worst Foods in America."
Men's Health Magazine can bite me.
The publication's beef (sorry, it couldn't be helped) was that both Five Guys' Bacon Cheeseburgers and their French Fries are too large, and that they contain too many calories. In their comments, Men's Health glibly disparaged these foods while making no representations regarding either item's quality or taste, all while neglecting to speak to the excellence of the company itself.
So, while Men's Health Magazine is biting me, let me tell you how their snarky, we-know-what's-good-for-you attitude did a disservice to Five Guys.
I've been eating at Five Guys since they opened down the street from my girlfriend's house in Arlington, VA, in 1986. The menu has changed only slightly since then, and at whichever Five Guys I've patronized, whether in the DC area or here, in California, I've found the food they serve to be consistent; always fresh, always gratifying, always an excellent version of what it is.
Like every Five Guys I've visited, the Parkway Plaza store is generally clean and well-stocked, and the efficiency of its service fluctuates with the length of the lines out front, just as it should. More important, every Five Guys meal I've eaten has left me feeling that I gained value for the money I spent.
The basic Five Guys Bacon Cheeseburger includes two fresh - never-frozen - hand-formed 3.2-ounce beef patties that are cooked to order. The meat is 80/20 ground chuck that's juicy, flavorful and uniquely... beefy. The patties are laid onto a fresh-made bun and dressed with two slices of American cheese and crispy, applewood-smoked bacon from Wisconsin's Cudahy smokehouse.
The unadorned sandwich is a delicious, high-end version of a fast food classic. It's Northern Virginia's answer to In-N-Out, the answer being, precisely, "You wish."
Ever the overachievers, Five Guys further distinguishes itself from its competitors with such a long list of free toppings that patrons can customize their burgers over 250,000 different ways.
And then, though it's hardly necessary, Five Guys serves boardwalk fries, which, it must be said, are God's way of giving purpose to the potato.
I'm pretty sure that the five guys who founded the chain grew up eating fries from Thrasher's in Ocean City, Maryland, same as the rest of us Northern Virginia boys who lived at the beach, come summer.
I say so because Five Guys' fries have the same superb twice-cooked edge, the same toothsome interior and potato-to-salt ratio as do the fries that I grew up eating on the boardwalk (just after body surfing and just before kicking ass at Skee-Ball at Marty's Playland). All Five Guys lacks are seagulls, dive-bombing the fries of inattentive customers.
If you've misplaced your taste for great French fries in vats of duck fat, under piles of cheese curds or amid the acetone whiff of truffle oil, then come, my friends; come remember quality; have a greasy paper bagful of Five Guys French fries (and a Bacon Cheeseburger), as Men's Health Magazine gingerly bites your buttocks.
And as you do, and as they do, bear in mind that, of course, Five Guys Burgers and Fries are fattening.
Aggressively so.
They're 920 calories for the sandwich and 1,474 calories for the large fries.
But this isn't diet food, and if you're dieting, what the hell are you doing, ordering a Bacon Cheeseburger and a bag of fries?
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Men's Health
- 11 Worst Burgers in America: https://web.archive.org/web/20120525084531/http://eatthis.menshealth.com:80/slide/9-worst-basic-burger
- 20 NEW Worst Foods in America: https://web.archive.org/web/20130114222222/http://eatthis.menshealth.com/slide/worst-fries
Patrick Cudahy: https://www.yelp.com/biz/patrick-cudahy-incorporated-cudahy
Marty's Playland: https://www.yelp.com/biz/martys-playland-ocean-city
Thrasher's: http://www.yelp.com/biz/thrashers-french-fries-ocean-city?hrid=_O5q2lsylwN2t4zYQsdHKQ read more