Six Guys!

07.12.07

This week, Ian’s out gallivanting around in Brazil. According to him, the same strange southern hemisphere phenomena that cause toilets to flush the wrong way and winter to happen in July also cause emails to be delayed or, in a worst-case scenario, lost completely, leaving Ian unable to perform his blogging duties. No matter! Now that he’s finally out of the picture, I’ve upped the ante; instead of finding one replacement guy for Ian, I’ve found Five Guys... There exists on television these days an ad for Miller High Life that, while nowhere near as iconic as the commercials that Errol Morris once directed for the “Champagne of Beers,” do depict the same mentality of honest Americana. In it, a High Life deliveryman returns to a French Bistro whose rights to sell Miller High Life have been recently revoked due to its snoodiness. High Life is, we’re told, “a good honest beer at a tasty price.” Indeed, the same can be said of the burgers at Five Guys, a chain of east coast burger franchises that has recently opened a couple of outposts in the New York area to a certain amount of acclaim within the hamburger-eating community. Being a guy myself, it only seemed fitting to head down to the Brooklyn incarnation and see what the fuss was about.

Someone more saccharine than I might say that the most important ingredient in cooking is love. Of course, chains are so mechanical in their operation that this human element is often completely lost in the cooking (whether or not there’s actually any “cooking” involved at most burger chains is a debate best left for another post). Not so at Five Guys, where a small army of people is behind the counter, poring over more minute details than you might expect (toasting buns, hand-cutting French fries, etc), making each burger to order. And the burger itself is good—surprisingly so. Combined with the friendliness of the staff—my cashier happily offered up a sample of their Cajun fries for me before I was forced to commit to Cajun or Regular—and the gentle prices, you could do a lot worse for your burger buck than Five Guys. I used to envy people on the west coast, with their bounty of In-N-Out’s, but that envy has definitely been assuaged.

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