Everyone and their mother loves Five Guys. But what really sets Five Guys apart from the pack are
its seemingly limitless toppings. In truth, there are only 15, all of them deliciously free. We've
tried to clarify a few of the many possibilities by providing the lowdown on Five Guys' toppings.
For those too lazy or famished to wade through 250,000 possible topping combos
themselves — Five Guys fans are eager to share some delicious shortcuts.
On Serious Eats, pungent suggestions come from love2cook, who prefers lettuce, mushrooms,
grilled and raw onions, sometimes opting for, quote, "double raw onion plus the grilled onion!”
Quora's most upvoted suggestion comes courtesy of a former Five Guys employee who swears,
"You can't go wrong with ketchup, A1, lettuce, pickle, grilled jalapeños, and extra cheese."
Twitter user Corey O'Donnell is a fan of
"[...] two extra patties, extra cheese, extra bacon, grilled mushrooms, grilled onions,
pickles, bbq sauce, and to top it off, a handful of fries."
Then there's Thrillist's reviewer who swears by mixing barbecue sauce and mayo with acidic pickles
and heat-radiating jalapeños to create, quote, "a pretty damn glorious burger."
Finally, back in his White House days, Barack Obama was known to hit up
Five Guys. Typically classy yet understated, his cheeseburger topped with lettuce, tomato,
jalapeño, and mustard became known unofficially as "The Presidential."
“Let me get the jalapeños and tomatoes, mustard.”
If you think Five Guys employees just randomly toss the toppings onto a bun,
think again. There's a method to the mess.
In an interview with Monsoon Martin, former Five Guys PR Manager Molly Catalano describes
the assembly of the burgers. The logistics were perfected by the Five Guys themselves — founder
Jerry Murrell and his five sons — long before they ever opened their first location. The burgers are
designed to optimize flavor combinations while maximizing the speed of each burger's assembly.
In 2019, The Manchester Evening News was treated to a behind-the-scenes glimpse
into Five Guys' stacking process. Employees start by layering the bottom bun with
hot stuff such as grilled mushrooms, onions, green peppers, and jalapeños,
creating a warm and welcoming bed for the well-cooked hamburger patty.
On the top bun, they slather the cooler likes of mayo, relish, pickles,
and lettuce. Tomato slices are always the final ingredient to be stacked onto the top
bun. Once everything's stacked up in perfect order, the completed burger is
delicately wrapped in foil, ensuring minimal squish-ability and maximum deliciousness.
While any Five Guys toppings can be grilled, some lend themselves better to the griddle than
others. On Ranker's classification of favorite Five Guys toppings, grilled onions came in
second after cheese, far ahead of raw onions in tenth place. Although Thrillist reviewer Kevin
Alexander throws some culinary shade on Five Guys' onion-grilling technique — noting a tendency to
undercook that prevents proper caramelization — Five Guys fanatics such as Reddit user kh27
and Twitter user Corey O'Donnell love themselves some grilled onions, caramelization be damned.
Grilled mushrooms are ranked eighth by Ranker,
while former Five Guys employee Addison Stanford highly endorses grilled peppers. He
also claims the heat causes the flavors to pop. Stanford's observations are backed up by Grills
Zone, which explains how grilling activates vegetables' natural sugars.
Also, Beginner Grilling points out that grilling retains more
nutrients than other forms of cooking.
One of Five Guys' many claims to fast food fame is that, unlike many of its rivals
who resort to frozen produce, almost all of its ingredients are fresh. Five Guys' fresh onions,
peppers, tomatoes, and lettuce are all cut open, sliced, and diced on the very day you order them.
“These cost about five times what you’d get at a normal restaurant.
And the reason for that is the quality. Onions chopped fresh everyday.”
The exception to Five Guys' freshness rule is Five Guys' mushrooms. As Delish points out,
mushrooms are one of the very few Five Guys items that are kept in a state of chill by
being stored in coolers. In an interview with Trend Chaser, Five Guys employees admitted to
coming across moldy mushrooms in bags, an unappetizing occurrence that can take
place when naturally moist raw mushrooms aren't completely or properly frozen.
Mushroom experts recommend steaming or sautéeing mushrooms prior to freezing.
The consumer site IWasPoisoned is full of plenty of reported food poisoning incidents
involving Five Guys burgers as well as some involving mushrooms in general. Fortunately,
to date, Five Guys' mushrooms haven't apparently wreaked havoc on any diners' digestive systems.
When Five Guys first started out in 1986, founding father Jerry Murrell claims he and his sons
sampled 16 different creamy possibilities before selecting The One. When the company
later stopped producing this prized mayo, the Guys decided to privately label their own.
Today, Five Guys' mayo is made for them exclusively by Heinz and is customized to
have the ideal level of creaminess and taste for their burgers. As a Five Guys employee claims,
the house mayo's extra creaminess comes with a hidden cost: a whopping high calorie count. It
comes in at 756 calories per 100 grams compared to an industry average of 500 to 600 calories.
The employee wrote,
"Very unhealthy yes, but the FG mayo is another level of goodness
and I could eat it with a spoon."
Mashed points out that Five Guys' mayo is the most caloric of all six sauce toppings offered
by the fast food chain. But, at least the sodium level is relatively low.
There are kosher pickles and then there are kosher pickles. Generally, "kosher" — Hebrew for "fit,"
as in "fit for consumption" — refers to an edible item that meets the standards of Jewish dietary
laws. Manufactured foods can be certified kosher by a rabbi or certification agency.
Resistant to spoilage, pickles were a dietary staple of Eastern European Jews,
spicing up an otherwise bland diet of bread and potatoes.
When Jews began migrating to New York City in the late 1800s,
pickles came too. In the New World, Jews marinated cucumbers in barrels of salty brine spiked with
garlic and dill. Due to their unique flavor, they became known as "kosher dill pickles."
While not all kosher dills are actually certifiably kosher, those made by Mt. Olive — and
used by Five Guys — are. Mt. Olive's pickles and relishes are certified by the Orthodox Union,
the world's largest kosher certification agency. This helps explain why, to some customers,
biting into a Five Guys burger dressed in pickles and/or relish is a sacred experience.
“I can feel it. I can feel the power. Yes!”
Slathering a burger or hot dog with ketchup, mustard,and relish covers all the fundamentals
of flavor and color. That makes it more than a little surprising that insiders — i.e., Five Guys
employees — have gone on the digital record with warnings against this holy trinity of condiments.
In a 2016 Trend Chaser report, employees revealed that "the grossest thing" in the restaurant
is that ketchup and mustard containers have been known to be breeding grounds for germs and grime.
“Whoa, easy there Greg!” “That wasn’t me. That was the ketchup bottle.”
Even though staff reportedly refill these containers on a daily basis
with Heinz ketchup and mustard, they don't always clean them out. Over time,
germs and even mold can collect, potentially merging with fresh condiments.
Another behind-the-counter profile, published by EssexLive,
featured an insider warning to steer clear of the relish. Five Guys' least popular topping,
the shunned relish supposedly sits around uselessly for up to three days before being
replenished. Apparently, relish neglect is a culinary phenomenon. Leaving out open jars of
the condiment is at best messy, and at worst, an invitation to contamination.
In Burgerworld, there's a lively debate as to whether tomatoes enhance or destroy
the enjoyment of one's burger. The anti-tomato squad includes
The Guardian food writer Felicity Cloake, who accuses tomatoes of being superfluous
and contributing to bun sogginess. Eater adds that slathering your burger
with more worthy and pungent condiments overwhelms tomatoes' already weak flavor.
In tomatoes' corner are supporters such as Texas Chicken & Burgers, which sees
sliced tomatoes as essential players in the burger game,
adding crucial tang, zest, and brightness that interacts with the smoky umami of grilled beef.
Granted, a lot depends on the quality of the tomatoes. Five Guys doesn't use
certified organic or antibiotic-free items. However, it invests in fresh,
high-quality produce, including top-notch tomatoes.
Five Guys is so pro-tomato that not even an epic catastrophe can prevent customers from receiving
two slices. In an Inc. interview, Jerry Murrell recalls a hurricane that devastated Florida's
tomato crop, causing prices to soar from $17 to $50 a case. When some franchisees told
Murrell they no longer could afford the fruit, Murrell suggested using only one tomato slice.
In doing so, he incurred the wrath of his sons/partners who declared:
"It should be two! Always!"
The same arguments for the banishment of tomatoes also regularly apply to lettuce.
The Guardian's burger experts claim that flavorless iceberg lettuce
undermines the burger experience by wilting upon contact with freshly seared beef.
More philosophical, Eater adheres to the proverb: "Life is short, you can have a salad tomorrow."
However, The New Yorker's Helen Rosner argues that the all-American lettuce is far from flavorless,
and it remains crunchy under the most extreme conditions including,
quote, "the steamy, ketchupy confines of a hamburger bun."
Five Guys is definitely on the pro-iceberg bandwagon. To ensure full flavors and
maximum crunch, it purchases fresh, whole heads of iceberg. As a result,
lettuce is ranked as Five Guys' third favorite topping. It also plays a starring role in one
of the most popular items on its secret menu: the lettuce wrap, in which a no-buns
burger is sandwiched between two crunchy leaves with zero carbs and almost zero calories.
For those who like their burgers to pack some heat, Five Guys offers three spicy toppings.
On the mild end of the hotness scale is the barbecue sauce. Five Guys uses Cattlemen's
Classic Barbecue Sauce, described on The Meatwave as having bold,quote, "in your
face" flavors. The dominant zest of tomato and zing of vinegar are tempered by smokiness and
mellow sweetness courtesy of molasses and corn syrup. Mustard bran supplies the heat.
Its hot sauce packs more fire. Five Guys uses Frank's RedHot Original, which earned a place
in the hot sauce pantheon in 1964. Frank's Original is made with aged peppers which,
according to PepperScale, generate 30,000 to 50,000 Scoville heat units.
“That’s hot.”
Rounding out the torrid trio are jalapeño peppers.
While the Mexican peppers get a rep for being hellishly hot, as PepperScale points out,
its Scoville heat unit range of 2,500 to 8,000 is lower than that of the world's hottest peppers.
They're ideal if you like a burger with some kick but want to avoid third-degree mouth burns.
Five Guys’ A.1. Steak Sauce is arguably the topping with the most pedigree. It was invented
in the late 1820s by Henderson William Brand, cook to England's King George IV.
Legend says, the King himself not only approved of the sauce but gave it the royal equivalent
of a thumbs up. Brand commercialized the sauce, which enjoyed success throughout
the UK and later in the New World, where it's currently owned and manufactured by Kraft/Heinz.
While some ingredients have been tweaked over time,
Brand's original, fit-for-a-monarch sauce prominently featured raisin paste.
Additional and more recent sweetness comes from all-American corn syrup and crushed orange purée.
Vinegar adds a shot of acidity. Further upping the acidity are tomatoes. Interestingly,
all tomatoes — including the beefsteak variety offered as a
Five Guys topping — possess glutamic acid responsible for beef's "meaty intensity,"
perhaps explaining why A.1. is so in sync with the burgers it tops.
Reddit is chock full of Five Guys employees sharing, quote, "tasty tricks to try out."
Examples include a simple BBQ mayo, which is one-third mayo and two-thirds barbecue sauce,
and a more ambitious "honey mustard" made with equal parts mayo, mustard, and barbecue sauce.
But, what really seems to get hackers' creative juices flowing is attempting to
recreate knockoffs of famous rivals' specialties out of Five Guy toppings. Thrillist enlisted
Food Network star-winning chef Justin Warner to test drive a few options.
The results included the In-N-Out Double Double, Animal Style Knockoff in which Five Guys mayo,
relish, and ketchup are mixed together to pass as In-N-Out's secret Spread.
As a Five Guys manager confessed to KentLive,
"if you get creative, you can make just about anything."
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