‘Vital but frayed’: Five Guys reviewed

Five Guys is a burger house from Arlington, Virginia, based on the premise that if you can serve a drink, cut a frill or make a hamburger, you will always make money in America. Thirty years and 1,700 restaurants later, it sits on Coventry Street near Piccadilly, where it soaks up the alcohol of a thousand British stomachs. If central London is an illuminated rubbish street between palaces, this is its restaurant: vital but frayed.

I’m here because I won’t eat at McDonald’s, even when I’m sad. I don’t think my McDonald’s burger is all from the same cow, and this bothers me: I can happily eat one cow, but a crowd scares me. McDonald’s also doesn’t give you satisfaction, no matter what you eat: is it just an idea? So I’m here – although I don’t know how many cows make up each Five Guys burger – and at some point you’ll be here too. If you don’t have the guts to book set lunches, or the energy to queue in Soho for tasty snacks in dark rooms, you’ll end up washing dishes at Five Guys. It looks at the Angus Steakhouse opposite: a perfect storm of cow fear. It is huge, covered in glass, decorated with red and white tiles and plastic. I’m thinking of the Nite Owl LA Confidentialclean and bloody.

In a restaurant like this, the atmosphere changes with the time of day: atmosphere is the weather. During a lunch weekend in London – where a child is sitting – there is panic. I blame inflation: normal parents walk around London these days tapping their wallets. There are lines to browse the Lego Store and a look from a souvenir seller feels like theft. Relieved, they pile into Five Guys because it’s as loud as a football game and as bright as dawn. In tribute to this, the staff are friendlier than any nanny. They guide you through the bewildering options of toppings – if expensive food infantilizes, so does this, and that’s fair – and never grow impatient. Then you stand in line: soon the food arrives wrapped in silver foil, as if from a loving but generic American mother.

It offers more Americana than just Noir. Virginia isn’t in the top ten potato-producing US states – the winner is Idaho, I checked – but Five Guys brands itself on a potato farm. Either that, or the storage areas are flooded or on fire. I’m not sure. As you walk to your operating room-colored plastic table and chair, you pass a huge stack of 50-pound bags of potatoes, and an even larger stack of boxes of peanut oil. The bags and boxes bear the Five Guys colors, as if they could pick a fight with McDonald’s potatoes or peanut oil if given the chance. I wonder if the potato sack decor is intentional, and if so, if it will soon turn into dining in a field or forest, in the manner of fleeing partisans. Everyone is doing cottage core – this is the Piccadilly version – because no one is happy with what they have.

For me, a child of low inflation, the prices are enormous. The burger costs £9.95 with ketchup and onions. It’s good: compact and wet and tasty. I don’t feel like I ate a slogan and some misery. The hot dog costs £7.25 and is less good, but hot dogs should be from pig and not cow: it is not one of their talents. The chips are too seasoned and too colored: a perfect chip is light yellow, not brown, and fresh. The chocolate milkshake costs £6.25: I read the ingredients list and I wish I hadn’t. But it is tasty: sweet and milky like childhood itself.