Saturday, August 13, 2011.
Five Guys And Thousands Of Customers.
A late afternoon radio show opened time for lunch. Mary Ann wanted to go to Five Guys in Covington, the first New Orleans-area franchise of an explosively growing chain of hamburger joints around the country. Last time I looked, they had over five hundred locations. This took me aback, because like most of their customers, the name and the setup seemed to indicate a small enough operation where one of the five guys himself might grill your burger.
Five Guys will always have the additional freight of nostalgia for the Marys. Their first sampling was in the Washington, D.C. area after Katrina. They were charmed by the old-style quality of the place. I liked it too. It presented itself as a fast food outfit that didn't serve fast food at all. They grill hamburgers one at a time on a hot grill, so that the meat gets a little crusty. (They stop short of grilling to order, because they won't cook less than medium doneness, thereby revealing the corporate hand.) They also cut fresh potatoes and fry the resulting sticks one small batch at a time. These two matters are what all hamburger places should do.
However, I fail to fall in love with Five Guys. In all my samplings of it countrywide (and the girls cannot resist stopping whenever we see one), the burgers are haphazardly thrown together, and the fries are never crisp. Almost getting it right might be more frustrating than missing the target by miles.
The man who is the franchisee for this one (and, I gathered, another in Baton Rouge) spotted me in the line and told me his story. He and his wife sank all they could spare into the project, he told me. Seems to me like a very good investment, given the popularity of Five Guys. (And the twenty people in line when we got there.)
He also told me his life story. He worked in the chain restaurant business locally for many years. His family goes back to the Alsatian emigration to Louisiana in the 1700s. And more interesting stuff.
Mary Ann ordered a regular hamburger, I a small one. You know what their regular is? A double. Two patties. Whoever thought of that is a marketing genius. You default here to what almost everywhere else would be an upgrade.
The burger was good, the fries fresh and hot (yay!), yet limp and oily (boo!). I'd say I came too soon (the place is only open a couple of months), but this is consistent with every other Five Guys I've been to.
After the radio show, neither I nor MA felt the need to eat anything significant. ML had crossed the lake to hang with her friends during what purported to be a tour of Dirty Linen Night. That's a parody of last weekend's tony White Linen Night, loosely organized by the galleries in the French Quarter. What the girls and boys wound up doing most of the night--to Mary Leigh's dismay--was hang out on Bourbon Street. She is no fan of the French Quarter, especially the sleazier precincts of it.
Mary Ann recorded the Frank Sinatra movie Von Ryan's Express a few weeks ago. She sat down to watch it with me until it was clear that this was no Rat Pack romp, but an action-packed World War II tale, if shot through with wise-guy humor. I knew that this was essentially a new tap into Sinatra's 1950s success in From Here To Eternity, and that he would not sing a note at any point in the film. Mary Ann didn't like the shooting, explosions, and Nazi mayhem and went to bed. I watched the whole thing. Old Blue Eyes gets gunned down in the final scenes. War is hell.
Five Guys. Covington: 70415 Highway 21. 985-892-4400.
