Nov 22, 2012

Five Guys Burgers and Fries: 3.5 stars

Five Guys

They have some fun singing employees here. And our potatoes were from Idaho and Washington today. But it was tricky with the whole "burger" versus "little burger" thing, and not explaining anywhere what that meant. Sara appreciated the napkins. I might, at one point, have said, "It's messy, it's messy, it's messy! Holy crap, I have mushrooms!"

Can I just say that Five Guys is far away? It took us 45 minutes to get there. We looked it up, and the two that were closest (according to google) were in Boulder and Aurora. There was only like a 3-minute difference between how long it would take to get to either place, so we picked Aurora, because I used to work around there ish. When we finally did get there, we ordered a burger, all the way, and a side of small fries. And two drinks. Sara's bun had a hole randomly in the top, so after we took the picture, she put a fry in it.



Freshness: 10,10
Juiciness: 10, 10
Deliciousness: 10 10
[Bun-soakage: 8, 10]
Flavor-awesomeness: 10, 10
Uniqueness: 7, 6
Condiment-ratio: 3, 2
[Greasiness: 1, 1]
Appearance: 5, 4
Side-dish deliciousness: 6, 6
Side-dish uniqueness: 2, 2
Price: 7, 7
Fullness-level: 10, 10
[Messiness: 10, 10]

My first bite. It was a little overwhelming. I've got some more pretty funny pictures of the both of us trying to eat this burger.

Sara's first bite.

So, I really think it would be helpful if, somewhere on this menu, they mentioned that the difference between the burger and the little burger was that a little burger has one patty, the regular burger has two (and if it is actually on the menu, perhaps it should be a touch more noticeable). That probably would've changed our order. I mean, those are thick patties! It's like the size of a homemade burger! I would never double that up. Talk about the mother of all giant sandwiches. And our fries! We got a small, and they still spilled way over into the bag. I'd say we could have filled another half an order of fries. It was pretty sweet. Just waaay more food than I anticipated getting. But they actually had a really cool menu, and I thought it had a unique set-up. You choose whether you want a burger or a little burger, and then you personally go through and choose which toppings you want put on it. The toppings are either listed on the menu in black or red, and if you order your burger with everything or all the way, then you get all the toppings in black. It was really cool. They don't have like fancy different meats for your burger or anything, but this was definitely not something I've seen before. It was fantastic.

As was the burger! So delicious. As I mentioned, it had two thick patties on it, so this was definitely not a lame, dinky little McDonald's happy meal. This was something my jaw barely opens big enough to eat. Pure awesome. And, even though we ordered the burger with everything on it, they didn't skimp on anything. We had tons of mushrooms, more than enough tomatoes pickles, grilled onions. It did make things rather messy. Toppings falling out left and right, juices dripping down my hands, my bun starting to fall apart. I definitely utilized my napkins, and unfortunately, the rating took a pretty big hit because of the messiness, bun-soakage and condiment-ratio sections. Also the side-dish uniqueness. All we saw were fries-- and they were delicious, just not very original.

The toppings that fell out of Sara's burger. Totally enough to furnish another burger!

This was probably one of my favorite places we've gone, though, and I wish there was one slightly closer to home. Sara and I each spent ten bucks, give or take fifty cents, and given how much food we got, that's a pretty good deal. Each time we do this, we finish rating and eating our burgers, and I always go through and calculate what the average rating of the burger was, and then consequently how many stars it gets. We've done one restaurant in the past that I remember being super delicious, but also pretty messy, and so its rating suffered. It makes me feel kinda guilty, and this restaurant falls in the same category. Five Guys deserves a better rating than we ended up giving it. I mean, I stand by each of the categories' ratings, but I wish that I had made some of the categories on a scale of 1-5 instead of 1-10 so that they wouldn't have such a detrimental effect on the overall score.

With the way the math all worked out, though, Five Guys Burgers and Fries gets an average rating of 6.6 from me and 6.3 from Sara, making a total of:

8 comments:

Berserk said...

Yeah, I get the math but it just seems wrong to rate Five Guy's the same as Jim's. The former may be the best burger that I've had, the latter... whenever I do go there I'm left thinking "oh, THIS is why I haven't come here in five years!"

Samara said...

It seems really wrong to me, too. I mean I like Jim's fine, but Five Guys was so much better. I want to give it 4 stars at least, 4.5 maybe. With the math, I'm already stretching it to give it what it has now.

But I'm definitely going to see what I can do come up with a more fair rating system, and then Sara and I will go back through the places we've been and update everything.

Carolyn said...

Get the cajun fries. they are awesome!

Berserk said...

Weighting your burger dimensions by percentages of the overall score probably wouldn't be too hard... the toughest part would probably be figuring out how much of the overall score each individual dimension should be worth. After that you'd just have to multiply before you totaled it up.

Or whatever you come up with. That's just an idea.

Samara said...

Cajun fries? How did we miss that?? Sounds awesome, and we'll definitely try them next time :)

That wouldn't be too hard, but it's much more math than I had in mind. I was thinking we'd change some of the criteria to be on a scale of 1-5 instead of 1-10. Maybe 1-3. Then just average everything out like we normally do, so some categories would have less weight than the rest. We'll definitely have to think about which are less important, but I think messiness goes on a lesser scale.

Berserk said...

Good point, that would be a lot of math.

I would put messiness, bun soakage, and uniqueness on lesser scales. Maybe condiment ratio and appearance...

but that's just me.

Samara said...

I was thinking those, definitely appearance, and the side dish ones. I mean, the side dish should affect the burger's ratings too much. It's a side dish.

Samara said...

Heh. *shouldn't