Review: Five Guys Famous Burgers and Fries

This is the only time I’ve ever been tempted to do a review of… airport food. No kidding. However, we were at Dulles, waiting for a plane to take us home from our trip to Paris and it was delayed because of rain (I think). We had enough time to get dinner, and we saw a Five Guys.  Five Guys is a DC-based restaurant that is slowly expanding across the country, and I hear a rumor that locations will spring up in Cincinnati (there are already locations in Indianapolis and Columbus!) sometime very soon.

And welcome they will be.

I had heard about how awesome Five Guys was when we planned our DC trip last year.  I was incredibly surprised that, in four years of living in DC, Terry had never eaten there.  We agreed in the airport that this would just be a really belated DC review.  I sat and watched the bags while Terry ordered our meal.

Five Guys does everything fresh– you can have any combinations of fifteen toppings for free on your burger.  Nothing is frozen (they don’t even have freezers on premises). Their fries are fresh cut (and they have big bags of potatoes in their entrance!).

The burgers are made out of fresh ground beef, and pretty juicy and delicious for a fast food burger.  There is a wait– much like Penn Station’s, but it’s pretty quick.  We got mayo, onion, bacon, cheese, BBQ sauce, lettuce, pickles and tomatoes on our burger, which was more than enough (with fries) to split.  I’d love to play around with the combinations– fried onions, yum!– but that will have to wait until I’m in Columbus or Indianapolis, or until one is built here.

The burger is juicy and well done, which is how they prefer to serve the burgers (and they won’t do it any other way).  Despite it being well, it was juicy as promised– so a win there.  The fries were thick-cut, but fried in peanut oil.  I like a thinner fry, but these were still pretty good.

I’d vote this as one of (if not the) best fast food hamburgers I’ve had.  A good, honest burger (as Terry would say), not fancy and that’s not a bad thing.  There are too many fast food restaurants that try to be too many things– and Five Guys focuses on three things: hamburgers, hot dogs, and fries.  For you vegetarians, they will do a “veggie burger” for you, but it’s really just a burger with all of their vegetable toppings on it (which I’m sure would be quite tasty) and their fries are vegan.  Their packaging is also pretty simple– aluminum foil, a cup for the fries, and brown paper bags.

Considering how disappointing airport food can be, if you’re hungry and traveling and see a Five Guys, you’ve found a place that will not disappoint.

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Tagged as: burgers, dc, dulles, five guys, fries, hot dogs