it's Five Guys. And it's opening week. 4 stars for day 2 honestly. We'll see how that changes.
ANY FRICKIN WHO. Hello yelpers and welcome back to another edition of Southern Cali girl living abroad. And somehow finding AMERICAN chain restaurants opening around her (ye, got a Popeyes about 25 minutes away in Cambridge last year too). So with that, let's review Five Guys. I've had it in the states, easy to do when there were at least 4 in the immediate surround area of my home, my mothers home and my in-laws home. Here's what I don't like about Five Guys. It's burgers. It's customizable to a point, but it's a burger that's kinda pricey. And in the UK, the price is.. we gonna talk about it trust me. Let's go folks!
Location: straight up horrible. The business that occupied it before was a pancake/waffle place. It's a very small area, shared with a petrol(gas) station as well as some gated building behind that. The Five Guys can literally only be accessed from one direction. Meaning if you're not already headed in that direction, you either drive thru Barton Mills and get on the A11 orrrr you go all the way around the five point roundabout, head in the opposite direction on the A11, make a right and cross two lanes of highway(aka the A11 opposing traffic), make a u-turn and then get on the A11 and proceed to make the exit one turn off you needed to get there. Yeah, it's ridiculous. A whole hassle. Anyways, the drive thru entrance and exit are both behind the building, and parking spots are limited to about 15-20, including disabled spots. So maybe 15. It's small, it's compact. Which probably explains why the wait times have been so low in the first two days.
Service: hate to say it but the Brits I've met, excel in customer service EVEN in fast food. A quick "you alright?" "Yeah, you?" "yeah, I'm good" before moving on to asking about my order and if I had any questions. Now, even with sounding well, American, he didn't assume I'd already been to a Five Guys. He was super thorough (all of the cashiers were with their customers) and apologized for their card readers being a bit laggy, even though the machines were new. When my milkshake was ready, I didn't quite here my number be called because a large group had entered, but the gentleman who'd called my number out repeated it politely until I heard him and went over to collect. When my food was ready? He simply said "miss, we've got your food now too!" Because I hadn't wandered to far away, fresh food and all yknow. Let's hope the service continues honestly. It's great considering McDonalds and Gregg's (a UK staple) are across the street.
Food: I ordered the bacon cheeseburger, large Cajun fries and a vanilla biscoff shake with cream(whipped cream. adapt folks, it's easier for me to use what I hear daily lol). The cheeseburgers are double patties unless you ask for a "little" which is just one. The meat is cooked medium rare, which is standard here in most places. My additional toppings were pickles, tomatoes, lettuce, mayo, mustard and ketchup. The burger was a little bit soggy on unwrapping (traditional Five Guys foil wrap too!), but delicious all the same. My husband was beyond happy for what was basically two orders of fries. The large that I ordered plus the small cup of bag fries. They were a tad over seasoned, but they were crispy and fresh af. The vanilla biscoff shake was great. It was simply a vanilla shake with Lotus Biscoff cookies chopped up into the ice cream. It wasn't overly sweet, but the ice cream was thick and didn't melt down in like 20 minutes. Actually it stayed pretty solid for almost an hour.
Overall a solid meal but man.. paying £24 which equates to $30ish? Yeah no. That was for one person, which to me is extremely overpriced, regardless of everything else. Will I be back? Sure. But not any time soon. Again, it's not a food I crave, even when I'm in the states, because it's burgers and fries. But it was good and I liked the service hence the four stars. read more