Five Guys makes me feel like a kid again

Firstly, a very serious point. Here’s a photo of Academy Award nominee Tom Hardy enjoying a Five Guys:

Right, on with the less important stuff.

Five Guys may well have saved the classic American burger. The classic American burger was dying, it had evolved into a nasty, grubby, greasy convenience food, composed of frozen ingredients, accompanied with sides of apathy and disgust.

When Five Guys opened in the UK a few years ago it changed all of that. The burger became an event again, and Five Guys became a place you don’t simply drop in – it’s a place that you visit – a place that makes you feel like a kid again.

Let’s talk about the soda machine

The soda machine in Five Guys is Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, except it’s not for chocolate, it’s for soda. That’s a long-winded way of saying: this is a fucking magical soda machine. It’s a soda machine that contains sodas you didn’t know were sodas.

For instance, there are sodas called “mello yello” and “Pibb Xtra” and “Diet Bangs”. At Five Guys they fizz out of the soda machine, all customisable with fruity syrups. You’ll never want a Pepsi Max again.

And it would be rude not to mention the fries

The fries come in a dinky little paper cup and initially you think: hey, hang on a minute mate, that paper cup is tiny, where are all the fries I paid for.

But don’t worry. At Five Guys, sure, they fill up the cup, then they keep shovelling fries into the bag. The spicy, savoury cajun fries are more than equal to Nandos’ peri-peri chips.

If you don’t like fries, it’s cool, they’ll give you free peanuts

Eat them while you wait for the important stuff.

Like the burgers, which look like this:

That’s what McDonald’s cheese dreams it was.

And a little bit closer…

Five Guys never use frozen beef patties, which is a relief.

There are 15 toppings to put on these burgers, which means there are 250,000 different ways to eat them

They’re so good that a man in Washington literally broke into a Five Guys to cook a cheeseburger the other day

I hope they let him off tbh.

Vegetarians tell me the cheese sandwich, with 15 fillings, is actually dece

Friends of the planet, consider yourselves catered for.

Then there’s the bold decor, all red and white with loads of chequers

It’s like eating in a 50s diner, without the segregation and casual sexism of Eisenhower’s America.

Look, if you still don’t believe me about Five Guys, here is a story for you

A man went to Five Guys when they were closing and they asked him if he wanted extra bacon, because they were going to throw it out. This is what he received:

It’s a good metaphor for the entire restaurant.