Five Guys, a Girl and a Hamburger Place

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

Dulles Airport. Usually two words that send a cold chill through my veins and strike fear in my heart. Endless lines leading to more endless lines and a main entrance so removed from the terminals that the word terminal itself loses its true meaning. It’s the only airport I’ve ever missed a flight from.

But today is quite another story. What in the past has taken me 2 ½ hours today took me only an hour, so I sat at Gate A6 with a twinge of hunger in my stomach and a brand new kind of problem: What would airport food have to offer me?

And then I saw big, bright red lights spelling out a name that has eluded me until now: Five Guys.

I’ve lived in the Washington, D.C., metro area since 2006, yet somehow have never dined at the region’s premier not-quite-as-fast fast food joint. But I’ve heard stories of their fare, and what sets this place apart from your average McDonald’s is the focus: the french fries. Fried up in peanut oil instead of vegetable oil and available both regular and cajun style, it was clear immediately that this place took its potato prep seriously. Flanking the line of customers that arched around the counter stood sacks upon sacks of potatoes, a sign to the left proudly proclaiming that today’s supply originated from Rexberg, Idaho, wherever the hell that is.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

In addition to the regular fries, I ordered a burger. The hamburger at Five Guys comes standard with two patties and a long list of toppings that are all no charge. The beef was better quality than what you’d get at a drive-thru window, and you could see the guys flipping actual beef patties just behind the cashiers. No heat lamps here, I suppose. The bun was a little flimsy, but anything closer to a Kaiser roll and I sense the meat would have turned the bread into a greasy, wet mess.

Five Guys immediately lets you know that this is not the place for food snobbery. Handed to you in a brown paper bag as if your mom just cooked you up something for lunch, the fries spill over the sad little cup they’re supposed to be contained in, filling the bottom of the bag and leaving it with unctuous leopard-like spots.

The taste is perhaps the most interesting mix of experiences. On one hand, the salty crispy goodness of everything I’ve come to know as a french fry shines through. Yet with other bites, I can taste distinctly that this was once indeed a potato. In all, it might be the perfect balance between food’s good and evil sides. I’ll let you decide which is which.

From Another Cook in the Kitchen

Try as I may to conquer the carb-filled mountain in front of me, I failed miserably. My cup still half full of fries, the rest of them strewn around my brown bag like delicious pick-up sticks, I gave up. If I trusted them to be able to keep for my flight, I would have taken the bag with me. But french fries tend to have a short shelf life, and even if they did hold up, that’d just be mean to whoever would have to smell them sitting next to me.

Still at Gate A6 and still 20 minutes away from boarding my plane (I hope. Six planes leaving one terminal in 15 minutes?!? These people are Nazis!), I’m glad that I can at the least say that Five Guys was worth the wait.