Five Guys' unlimited free toppings policy has led to the birth of a "secret menu" with
creative recipes dreamed up by its very own fans.
These tasty items go way beyond the standard burger combinations and stretch their topping
menu to its limits.
Forget a boring 'ol hamburger bun.
The double grilled cheese burger takes two beef patties and tucks it snugly between two
individual grilled cheese sandwiches.
Ordering this one is simple: Simply asked for two grilled cheese sandwiches and a bunless
hamburger.
As with all Five Guy burgers, the bunless burger patties will be hand-shaped from never-frozen
chuck and sirloin, while the exterior grilled cheeses will come with melted Kraft American
cheese.
The buns will be served upside-down and come out toasted until golden brown.
Top the burger patty to your heart's content with fixin's of your choosing.
If you have a bolder palate, you may want to add some jalapenos or a squirt of hot sauce.
One fateful afternoon in 2009, President Barack Obama walked into a Five Guys.
The former commander in chief's healthy eating habits have been well-documented, but he is
also known to have a weakness for a good burger.
On this particular day, Obama had a hankering for Five Guys.
He placed several orders for his staff, and placed his own order: a cheeseburger with
lettuce, tomatoes, jalapenos, and mustard, thus making secret menu history forever.
Today, you can order Obama's favorite burger, AKA "The Presidential,” at any Five Guys
location.
Of course, the staff may or may not know the details of Obama's order off the top of their
heads, so you may instead want to specify that you want a cheeseburger with the aforementioned
toppings.
"A cheeseburger with lettuce, tomatoes, jalapenos, and mustard" may not run off the tongue as
smoothly as "the Presidential," but the delicious, Obama-beloved burger is worth the additional
verbal exercise.
A burger joint is only as good as its fries.
Five Guys, happily, excels in the french fry department.
Fries are crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and doled out in huge, heaping
portions.
According to the menu, Five Guys offers fries two ways: traditional "Five Guys style" or
"Cajun style."
But word on the street is that select Five Guys locations will also serve your fries
nacho style, or covered in melted cheese, upon request.
Take things a step further and throw on some bacon and/or jalapeno slices.
Note that while most Five Guys toppings are free, adding cheese to your fries might set
you back fifty cents or so, depending on location.
Still, totally worth it.
"It ain’t easy being cheesy!"
Here's another cool thing about Five Guys: they're a burger joint that serves hot dogs.
And not just any hot dogs: these are all-beef, kosher, premium franks from Hebrew National.
The official Five Guys menu offers four varieties, including "kosher style," cheese, bacon, and
bacon-cheese.
But fans have gotten imaginative with the toppings and come up with some pretty tasty
secret menu hot dog alternatives.
Notably, Food Network celebrity chef Justin Warner dreamed up the Breaking Windy City
Dog, which puts a cajun twist on a classic Chicago-style dog.
Like a classic Chicago hot dog, the BWCD tops a frankfurter with pickles, tomatoes, relish,
green peppers, and mustard.
The chef adds hot sauce and a sprinkle of cajun seasoning.
To order, ask for a kosher style dog with all the aforementioned ingredients.
Ask for cajun seasoning on the side so you can sprinkle it on yourself.
The Five Guys patty melt is poignant in its simplicity.
Like a traditional patty melt, the secret menu favorite takes a mild-mannered burger
and transforms it into a sandwich.
But while a conventional patty melt calls for Swiss cheese, caramelized onions, and
griddled rye bread, the Five Guys patty melt diverges.
The Five Guys secret menu version is essentially a grilled cheese sandwich with a burger patty
inside.
Sources report that the staff will have no qualms grilling one up special for you.
To request a patty melt at Five Guys, order a grilled cheese sandwich with a burger patty,
onions and your choice of toppings.
The melt masterpiece will come served with two slices of grilled, inside-out hamburger
buns and melted Kraft cheese, delivering a crunchy punch on the outside and a gooey interior.
For all its charms, Five Guys isn't exactly the most diet-friendly restaurant.
That said, there are "low-carb" friendly options at Five Guys for health-conscious fans with
a bit of resourcefulness.
Take the "burger bowl," for instance, beloved by fitness-minded, Five Guys-loving bloggers
and Instagrammers.
To score this secret menu item, ask for a bunless Little bacon cheeseburger with pickles,
grilled onions, and green peppers.
Steer clear of ketchup, which is loaded with carbs, and go for mayo, mustard, and/or hot
sauce on top.
The Five Guys' Little bacon cheeseburger bowl should set you back less than 500 calories
and two net carbs.
In-N-Out, another burger chain with a cult following, has a fairly extensive secret menu
of its own.
Among the most beloved are the not-so-secret "Animal Style" fries and burgers.
An Animal Style burger includes mustard grilled directly into the patty, in addition to lettuce,
tomato, grilled onions, and special sauce.
Similarly, Animal Style fries come showered in melted cheese, grilled onions, and special
sauce.
It may be that other chain’s invention, but you can order In-N-Out Animal Style burgers
and fries at Five Guys, too.
To order an Animal Style-inspired burger, ask for a cheeseburger topped with an extra
slice of cheese, grilled onions, tomatoes, and pickles.
You can try and ask if they'll grill mustard into the patty, but past attempts have reportedly
been unsuccessful.
For Animal Style fries, order fries topped with cheese and grilled onions.
To DIY In-N-Out's special sauce, mix mayo, ketchup, and relish together, then douse your
burger or fries in the heavenly mixture.
You can have the staffers top your burger or fries with mayo, ketchup, and relish themselves,
but we recommend ordering the sauces separately and mixing up them yourself to get the consistency
right.
Though the Five Guys official menu only offers a traditional BLT, crafty vegetarians can
hack the menu to order a "BLT" without any meat.
Like vegetarian chef Richard Landau, Five Guys' knows that the rich, meaty texture and
taste of mushrooms makes them a suitable substitute for bacon.
Of course, the chef's recipe calls for for fancy, thin-sliced wild mushrooms, but the
grilled white button mushrooms used by Five Guys work nicely, too.
To order a vegetarian BLT from Five Guys, start by requesting a traditional BLT, which
comes with six strips of American smokehouse bacon, two fresh tomato slices, mayo, and
hand-torn lettuce on a bun.
But, ask them to hold the bacon and replace it with grilled mushrooms.
To replace the crunch of the bacon, ask your cashier to throw in some jalapeno peppers
into the sandwich for good measure.
For a bit of protein, go wild and request a slice of melted cheese.
Beloved by Brits, the English chip butty, also known as a "chip sandwich" or "chip cob,”
is essentially a french fry sandwich.
The carby concoction is traditionally made by serving french fries on white bread with
a generous slathering of cold butter.
But different variations may also call for ketchup or malt vinegar.
If you find yourself craving a french fry sandwich, Five Guys can make it for you.
To order a Five Guys-style chip butty, ask for a Little order of fries inside of an untoasted
bun and try to ignore any perplexed looks from the other customers.
You can top your chip butty with plenty of ketchup to break up what is otherwise just
a plain white pile of starch, and there's plenty of malt vinegar right there on the
table.
Wrapped in bacon and stuffed with cream cheese, jalapeno poppers are an irresistible tex-mex
appetizer.
The secret menu jalapeno popper and grilled cheese from Five Guys delivers everyone's
favorite fiery appetizer in sandwich form.
You can try the jalapeno popper sandwich yourself the next time you pop by the burger joint
by ordering a grilled cheese sandwich.
But instead of stopping there, ask if your sandwich can also be topped with extra cheese,
bacon, and jalapenos.
The applewood-smoked bacon will give your grilled Kraft Singles a nice crunch while
the fresh jalapenos add a bite.
Fair warning: the fresh jalapenos can pack some heat.
If you have timider taste buds, we suggests pairing it with our next subject.
In addition to custom burgers, dogs, and fries, Five Guys lets you design your very own milkshakes.
Shakes are hand-spun from vanilla ice cream and served with your choice of unlimited mix-ins.
Choose from yummy ingredients like cherries, peanut butter, strawberries, bananas, chocolate,
sea-salted caramel, and bacon.
That's right.
Crumbled applewood-smoked bonafide bacon.
For a creamy treat that is packed with protein, go for the extra-chunky peanut butter bacon
milkshake.
The secret menu heavy-protein shake blends savory peanut butter, real peanuts, and bacon
with sweet honey, chocolate, and vanilla ice cream.
The extra-chunky creation requires a little leg work on your part to make, so get ready.
Start by ordering milkshake with peanut butter, chocolate, and bacon.
For the extra chunky part, grab a handful of complimentary peanuts from the bin, crack
them out of their shells, and crush them up inside a paper bag.
Sprinkle the crushed peanuts atop your milkshake and enjoy.
Here's another one from the imagination of madman-slash-genius chef Justin Warner: a
Five Guys Thai-style lettuce wrap, or as he calls it The Probably-Not-Worth-the-Work-or-Weird-Looks
Thai Lettuce Wrap.
This Thai lettuce wraps draws inspiration from the common Thai restaurant appetizer,
which in turn is an adaptation of the traditional Southeast Asian larb salad.
Fair warning: as its title suggests, this Five Guys secret menu item does require some
effort and a bit of bravery.
To try the Five Guys-ified version of the Southeast Asian larb salad, start by ordering
a bunless hamburger in a lettuce wrap.
In place of hoisin and chili sauces, ask that the patty be topped with steak sauce and jalapenos.
Next, grab a handful of peanuts from the complimentary bin, crack them open, and crumble them onto
the meat.
Use the lettuce as a kind of tortilla-like vessel to shove the delicious fillings into
your face and decide for yourself if it's worth the weird looks.
This one we found deep in the bowels of Reddit.
It was shared by a Five Guys cook, who assures everyone that Five Guys cooks will usually
"make whatever you want" as long as they have the ingredients.
The Artery Annihilator fuses the Five Guys hot dog and bacon cheeseburger into one, beautiful
tower of meat.
To order an Artery Annihilator, ask for a bacon cheeseburger and request that a hot
dog be sliced in half and laid on top of the patty.
Then pile on desired ingredients.
If artery annihilation truly is your goal, why hold back?
Slather on the mayo and barbecue sauce and pair with a large order of fries and a bacon
milkshake with whipped cream.
Pay a friend to mash up your meal and feed you so you don't accidentally burn off any
calories while lifting food to your mouth or chewing.
Okay, maybe not that last part.
While its origins are up for debate, the Sloppy Joe found its way into the American mainstream
in the twentieth century.
It reached its heyday in the late '60s, when the Manwich, essentially canned Sloppy Joe
sauce, was released into grocery stores nationwide.
Though the popularity of the Sloppy Joe has waned, you can still reminisce over the flavors
of the classic ground beef sandwich at Five Guys.
Just order a burger with grilled green peppers, grilled onions, ketchup, and barbecue sauce.
The combination of ground chuck and tomato-based sauces tastes exactly like a Sloppy Joe.
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