(Credit: Jessica Novak)
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Recently, a mouth-watering urge for red meat set me on a carnivorous trek through the Inner Harbor. Inside Harborplace's Pratt Street Pavilion, I could smell the tantalizing aroma of grease before I even turned the corner to behold the red block letters announcing my arrival to Five Guys.
I've been to one of the many Five Guys in Maryland before, so I knew the Little Cheeseburger ($3.95) was a single-patty love machine and a Regular Cheeseburger ($4.95) was a double-patty masterpiece. I wanted room in my gut for the bag o' fries so I ordered the little guy, knowing I could steal bites from my boyfriend's double when he replenished our ketchup supply.
Five Guys' menu is simple: Burgers, fries and soda. (There are hot dogs, too, but that's not what you're here for.) The long list of toppings and condiments -- including burger rarities like hot sauce, green peppers and jalapeno poppers -- are what make each burger as beautiful and unique as a snowflake. List the toppings you want when you order, and enjoy free peanuts (Five Guys' amuse bouche) while you wait. The wait, however, is never more than four or five peanuts long.
Dish: It's a two-handed, elbows-on-the-table process to eat Five Guys' juicy hunk of meat shmooshed between a toasted bun.
You'll go through approximately 37 napkins, if you order your burger with lots of fixins (but everyone should know there is no such thing as too many fixins). My burger wasn't as moist as I'd have liked around the edges, but it was nothing some heavy-handed squirts of ketchup and mustard couldn't drench. The tomato slices were thick, pickle chips sweet and the lettuce was present but not bulky or intrusive.
Seeing the grease-soaked paper bag of fries, you'd think they'd be soggy, but the stains were simply remnants of peanut oil on the crisp, boardwalk-style fries. These fries are the best way to round out a meal here, since the long, square-cut morsels count as a vegetable in the Five Guys' universe.
Damage: You could probably panhandle enough to afford a burger, fries and soda. The Little Cheeseburger was $3.95. The Regular Cheeseburger was $4.95, and if you're a high roller, you can spend $5.49 on a Regular Bacon Cheeseburger.
A regular bag of fries was $2.35 and enough to feed two fatties and a grazing friend.
A regular soda with free refills (of course) was $2.25.
Decision: Five Guys is quick and cheap, and the well-done burgers taste so good going down, they're worth every pang of guilt you'll experience as you waddle back to your couch. The only catch? After a Five Guys feeding frenzy, you'll need to devote at least one full hour to digesting and relieving yourself of all the gluttonous glory.
