I love history, don't you? Five Guys has a rather interesting place in food history - it's a family run endeavour by five members of the the Rothschild family in the years following on from The Great Incident. Not only that, in its first two years of business, they enacted a "Five Guys Only" policy in that social scientists at the time believed that putting more than 5 men into a small space had a 65 % chance of breaking out into bloody combat. However, in 1963 this policy was repealed as the restaurant was losing business to the fast-growing Mack & Donald's Ham-Burger Co. which, of course, is better known today as the ubiquitous franchise Burger King. Fast forward to 2013, and Five Guys set out to conquer the UK with its famous burgers, fried potatoes, and fluoridated water.
I hope I've taught you all something today. My overall impression is that if Five Guys had opened here 4 years ago, this'd be a very different review. For me, the place sits in a weird twilight zone of burger places - it's not particularly cheap (I'll come to this in a bit) even if it does look like a slightly cleaner McDs, the burger quality is ok, but nowhere near the Honests and Pattys of this world, and, unlike Tommi's, there's no bearnaise sauce. Fortunately, I didn't have to wait long for my burger in Angel, but the Covent Garden one fills up pretty comprehensively.
Sidling up to the counter, I discovered that burgers don't come with chips. Ok. Then...little or normal sized? Assuming little was a slider I went for a normal bacon cheeseburger. The burger topping choices induced a pretty substantial option paralysis for me, so I blurted out a few items that came to mind and was done with it. I figured I should not carb overload as I am wont to do so ended up with a little cajun chips. £11.50? What? But it looks like McDonald's! Ok. And I don't even get a hugely sugary beverage with that. I mean, £2.50 will get you a 512 oz kid's sized soda in Pawnee.
Anyway, turns out I could've ordered little everything (the minimum for a burger and chips here is £7.50 in case you're wondering). The burger (+ grilled onions and green peppers and jalapenos and ketchup, yes, I was flustered) was pretty substantial and I had chips overflowing from the tiny bear-fez-sized paper cup.
When you serve a well done burger, it's always going to set the ceiling at decent. I mean, it's not a bad burger. It's better than any of the fast food chains, but...as it's well done, it's not a juicy mess and it's not designed to be a total slopfest (I'm looking at you Lucky Chip). The flavours are ok - nothing world beating. Again, in this price range I much prefer Tommi's. The cajun chips treated me well, decent flavour although a quarter of them sogged out a bit (not horribly so, but enough to notice). They're good and plentiful although they fall short of the 'like crack' label.
I mean, I wouldn't veto going back, but I'd much sooner go to any of the aforementioned places than here. I wouldn't dream of queuing for it either - solid is solid, but it's just not quite memorable enough to warrant it. read more