Five Guys Burgers and Fries

On Saturday, I had lunch at the Five Guys Burgers & Fries in Cerritos, California in connection with a FriendFeed meetup. The Cerritos location is on South Street, just east of Cerritos Auto Square (here's a tangentially-related video).

Five Guys started in my old stomping grounds of Arlington, Virginia (but after I left), at the corner of Columbia Pike and Glebe Road. They have since franchised and gone all over the place, including locations in southern California.

Here is my Yelp review of the Saturday lunch:

A Los Angeles FriendFeed meetup was held at this Five Guys on Saturday, February 21, 2009, and in the week prior to the meetup, people from all over the country were comparing Five Guys to southern California hamburger chain In N Out, and stating that Five Guys was better.

Menu-wise, Five Guys has two gimmicks that In N Out doesn't offer. First, they have free peanuts in the shell. I'm not a huge peanut sheller myself, but the two young kids at the meetup were definitely enjoying the peanuts. Second, Five Guys has an extensive choice of toppings for your burger; if In N Out has this breadth of toppings, it's not well advertised.

The service here was definitely a cut above the usual fast food place. We were not the only large party at the place - there was a group of yo-yo enthusiasts a few feet away from us. But a couple of employees stopped by a few times to make sure that everything was OK, to get us drink refills, etc.

Oh, and by the way, I followed the advice of several FriendFeeders and just ordered the small burger and small fries. That was more than enough; I had lunch at around 3:15 pm and ended up cancelling my dinner plans.

There are varying opinions on Five Guys, especially on the value of the burgers, but one writer had a very strong opinion:

A flyertalker once took me to the Dulles one.

I HATE THEM. They are HORRIBLE.

But the writer went on to clarify:

But only because they don't have one close to me ;) Burger was top notch!