Five Guys is a burger house from Arlington, Virginia, based on the premise that if you can serve a drink, cut a fringe, or make a hamburger, you will always make money in America. Thirty years and 1,700 restaurants later, it sits on Coventry Street off Piccadilly, soaking up the alcohol of a thousand British stomachs. If central London is a strip-lit bin alley between palaces, this is its restaurant: vital but fraying.
I am here because I will not eat at McDonald’s, even when I am sad. I do not think my McDonald’s burger is all from the same cow, and this disturbs me: I can eat one cow happily, but a multitude frightens me. McDonald’s doesn’t fill you either, no matter what you eat: is it just an idea? So I am here – though I do not know how many cows constitute each Five Guys burger either – and at some point you will be here too. If you haven’t the wit to book set lunches, or the energy to queue in Soho for suave nibbles in dark rooms, you will wash up at Five Guys eventually. It eyeballs the Angus Steakhouse opposite: a perfect storm of cow angst. It is vast, glass-plated, decorated in red and white tile and plastic. I think of the Nite Owl in LA Confidential, clean and bloody.
The food arrives wrapped in foil, as if from some loving yet generic American mother
The atmosphere changes with the time of day in a restaurant like this: atmosphere is weather. On a weekend lunchtime in London – a child’s sitting – it is panic. I blame inflation: normal parents walk around London patting their wallets these days. There are queues to browse at the Lego Store and a glance from a souvenir hawker feels like theft. They pile into Five Guys with relief, because it is as noisy as a football game and as bright as dawn. The staff, in homage to this, are sweeter than any nursery maid. They guide you through the bewildering options of toppings – if expensive food infantilises, so does this, which is fair – and never get impatient. Then you queue: soon the food arrives wrapped in silver foil, as if from some loving yet generic American mother.
It offers more Americana than mere Noir. Virginia isn’t in the top ten of potato-producing US states – the winner is Idaho, I checked – but Five Guys styles itself on a potato farm. Either that, or the storage rooms are under water or on fire. I’m not sure. As you walk to your operating-theatre-coloured plastic table and chair, you pass a huge pile of 25kg sacks of potatoes, and a bigger pile of boxes of peanut oil. The sacks and boxes wear the Five Guys colours, as if they might have a fight with McDonald’s potatoes or peanut oil given the chance. I wonder if the potato sack décor is deliberate and, if so, if it will soon transmogrify into dining in a field or forest in the manner of fleeing partisans. Everyone is getting in on cottage-core – this is the Piccadilly version – because no one is happy with what they have.
To me, a child of low inflation, the prices are immense. The burger is £9.95 with ketchup and onions. It’s good: dense and wet and tasty. I do not feel as if I have eaten a slogan and some misery. The hotdog is £7.25 and less good, but hot dogs should be pig, not cow: it’s not one of their talents. The chips are over-seasoned and over-coloured: a perfect chip is pale yellow, not brown, and fresh. The chocolate milkshake is £6.25: I read the ingredients list and I wish I hadn’t. It’s tasty, though: sweet and milky as childhood itself.
Five Guys Piccadilly Circus, 2 Coventry St, London W1D 7DH.
‘Vital but fraying’: Five Guys reviewed
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02.05.2024
Five Guys is a burger house from Arlington, Virginia, based on the premise that if you can serve a drink, cut a fringe, or make a hamburger, you will always make money in America. Thirty years and 1,700 restaurants later, it sits on Coventry Street off Piccadilly, soaking up the alcohol of a thousand British stomachs. If central London is a strip-lit bin alley between palaces, this is its restaurant: vital but fraying.
I am here because I will not eat at McDonald’s, even when I am sad. I do not think my McDonald’s burger is all from the same cow, and this disturbs me: I can eat one cow happily, but a multitude frightens me. McDonald’s doesn’t fill you either, no matter what you eat: is it just an idea? So I am here – though I do not know how many cows constitute each Five Guys burger either – and at some point you will be here too. If you haven’t the wit to book........
© The Spectator
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