really well done. no, not the burger, your review...

tonight city house for dinner, wednesday ombi for lunch, and this weekend 5 guys with the kids. not to mention all the baking going on around here.

happy holly daze... yikes! i feel another fast coming on.

I went there for lunch today. The fries were great, but the top patty on my burger wasn't cooked all the way through. And I paid almost ten bucks for a(n undercooked) burger, fries and a drink.

Told ya to get the single-patty burger. Did you tell them, and did they try to make it up to you? Uncooked food is one of the few things I will not suffer in silence.

I was already finished with lunch by the time your post went up. And, no, I didn't say anything. Considering that there are exactly three items on their menu...bah, whatever.

Fat Mo's all the way.

But where's the chocolate shake? Someone should open an equally narrow-focused shake store next door. Chocolate only. Medium only. Call it Choc One Up.

How many Choc One Up shakes would you have to sell to pay that kind of retail rent every month?

I couldn't handle a shake with the burger and the amount of fries I had. That works fine at Bobbie's, where I'm always griping about the stinginess of the French-fry orders—but the thought of large quantities of dairy on top of all that meat and grease at Five Guys just makes my knees buckle.

Jim Ridley, I fully agree. I am loving the Five Guys. I've already been five times! I had been once in DC a few years ago, but I didn't really "get" how good these burgers are until they opened up here in Nashville. It really is beautiful in its simplicity.

I also opt for the "Little Cheeseburger." The meat-to-bun ratio is better, and yes, it does give the toppings more of a voice.

I talked to a manager last week who said they plan to have something like twelve (!) locations in the Nashville area within five years. West End location opens in January, then Cool Springs, then Maryland Farms, then Mt Juliet, and on and on.

and this right here, boys and girls, is the key to all good things in life. focus on something specific and then excel at it. not everyone can be your target audience so just wow the ones that are...

I love burgers, and was underwhelmed even before being offended.

Fat Mo's has chocolate shakes.

Claudia, this seems to go against your "same ole same ole" comment from the other day.

absolutely not... we're talking a burger place here. doing burgers well and not adding a chicken parm option or a "wrap" to their menu as pink mentions in his post.

what i said was that at a fine dining restaurant such as what i imagine 'city house' to be - i'd like to see some originality. i'd like the chef be able to do what they do - be who they are within their vision of their restaurant, in this case italian - and not be restrained by lackluster patrons who can't handle anything other than what they are used to seeing from either their limited exposure or fear of anything different.

i'm sure you can see how one thing has little to do with the other...

I don't care if Fat Mo's has shakes - their burger is not as good. There, I said it.

At least they cook it.

one undercooked patty does not a bad restaurant make... i'm sure they'd have been more than happy to recook or replace the offending culprit. i mean, shit happens... my tuna steak last night had to go back on the grill due to it being too rare. but it was wonderful when i gave it that second shot.

and it is very hard to get a really great french fry that is worth the calories...

and for me... just me who always whines about my weight and fat grams, one burger with fries gets chased with a diet coke or water. a shake would make me barf. but that's just me. all me. well, me and pink. but just us.

Steve is really hung up on this undercooked thing. You thought your burger could have used a few more minutes. We get it. But you didn't tell them and give them a chance to fix it.

Now if you had given them a chance to fix it and they didn't, OR if you give them another shot and they still screw it up, then by all means, complain away.

I agree with you both. True, one bad experience doesn't make a restaurant bad. Then again, that doesn't really matter to you if you're the patron having the bad experience. And having been in Steve's shoes on many occasions, paying lots of money for an unsatisfying meal, I often do exactly the same thing: keep quiet, never go back, and tell most everyone I know the place is awful. Eventually, I find, most of those places go away. If I'm not happy, chances are good others aren't either.

If I got an uncooked burger for $10, I'd be ill too—perhaps literally, if I ate it. But I definitely would have let them know. One way to judge a restaurant is how they handle such a problem. I had lunch one time at [redacted], and I found a long hair in my food. Without my saying a word, the manager on duty (who could see me up front) discreetly apologized and offered me a gift card for two free meals. Only trouble I've ever had there, and because of the way they handled it, I go often enough to know it was a freak occurrence.

I'd be curious to know what Five Guys would have done to square things with you. But the old cliche is true: you only get one chance to make a first impression.

PEOPLE !!!

isn't there a diff between undercooking a burger or a steak - OR - getting crappy food at a restaurant that couldn't be saved no matter what?

i mean geeshk - i think so... i go to an upsale place and the food just is sucking due to a bad chef or poor ingredients is just not the same as say, going to the palm, mortons etc and having to ask them for a bit more doneness. that happens alla the time. not great - but it doesn't hurt my feelings.

i too rarely if ever say so much as a word - unless specifically asked - when i am dining out. i also just pay my bill and then might bad mouth the place if it was really awful and will rarely go back unless a new chef is in place or i'm with a group and that's their preference.

but a too rare piece of meat is such an easy fix...

I agree it's an easy fix. But I can't blame Steve for being irked that it wasn't done right the first time.

I will say, though, that all three times I've been the burger has been well-done, in every sense of the term. I wonder what was going on yesterday.

there's irked and then there's IRKED
so like whateva...
if steve goes back, i hope he gets a better burger. if not, chalk one up for fat mo's.

what was going on? somebody undercooked a beef patty... and now the media has been alerted!

i for one feel better now.

Since I can tolerate a range of defects (in general and in a restaurant), I'm not always aggressive, either, about asking for a re-do, if the item wasn't a major investment. Sometimes I just live with the underdone item.

Especially if it's an animal lipid -- for me, this time of year, 'tis the season to eat lipids, falalalalalala. A burger and a shake -- the double lipid-sugar whammy, oof! A slightly underdone burger is still a juicy slab of forbidden animal flesh.

fluff - sheer poetry, girlfriend!

i stopped in to check it on out. had the little cheeseburger and asked for a half of a small order of fries (paid for em all but wanted fewer in my face) and a diet coke. it was very good. the only thing i thought was that on the little burger, the bun was a lot of bread for the one patty - kinda overwhelming. BUT not a big deal... for a burger it's a great place to go. i rarely eat burgers though... but now i am fully checked out on the whole 5 guys experience and i can sleep at night.

Got some take out last night; big burger was a bit messier than necessary but went down great. Surprisingly, or not, it was prepared medium to medium rare despite signage indicating "we serve our burgers juicy and well-done". Fries were good, but better on the way home (hot) than at my kitchen counter (warm).

Free peanuts were a nice touch, as I waited patiently for my made-to-order order.

I'll go back.

Medium to medium-rare ground meat is unsafe to eat.

it is?

amazing that i'm still alive... medium rare for me! but folks say sushi is unsafe too - parasites. as is well charred meat - carcinogens. so i'm thinking steve abstains from those as well.

.
Rare -medium rare. Nothing like it!

amazing that i'm still alive... medium rare for me!

I smoked for 10 years and didn't die. Does that mean cigarettes don't cause cancer? Of course not.

I'm fine with people taking whatever culinary risks they're comfortable with. But Scott was also served an undercooked hamburger without asking for one, and there is a broad consensus about the health risks of eating undercooked ground beef.

Freshness and care of handling are mitigating factors, yes, but something tells me Five Guys isn't grinding their own beef every day. Correct me if I'm wrong.

i guess i just live dangerously, steve. when i go to a restaurant and order meat, i order it medium rare. i eat raw fish on a weekly basis. i char the hell outa my steaks, getting thick cuts so they're black on the outside, rare in the middle. sometimes i forget to wear my seatbelt and i cross in the middle of the street. i fly on airplanes and drink diet sodas. oh, and i managed to not be one of the people who died eating packaged spinach. phew! close call!

most likely if there are any deaths at 5 guys it'll be me killing the employees who scream out the big greetings when you enter. i hate that shit and there are no words to explain how much...

Claudiacita:

Back in KY, there was a hyper-cheery older lady at Capt'n D's who'd holler at everyone "Y'all come back... Ya Hear?" And no matter how busy she was, the dippy au-revoir went on. And on.

I second Claudia's commotion...adding that I smoke an occassional cigarette, but only when I'm drinking.

The Five Guys greeting policy is enough to keep me away. Shut up and give me a medium rare burger.

rare steaks and rare burgers are two very different things. You don't know how many sources that burger came from, so it's best to cook just past medium. With a rare steak, you cook the outside, killing any bacteria. The inside is essentially sterile, if you can use that word, since it's never been in contact with anyhting dangerous, unless it's a mad cow, and then that's a whole other story.

if it's essentially sterile, it will not reproduce other steaks so we might as well eat it.

mad cow, i.e bovine spongiform encephalopathy, Creutfield-Jakob disesase, st. vitus dance, or whatever else is called is so freakin' rare than you're more likely to be killed by falling cocoa-nuts (180 cases worldwide) or mauled by dogs (12 cases in the US on average per year) than BSE.

However, if you fancy becoming a rare statistic, or wanna have your family appear sobbing on Dateline NBC, make sure you eat British meat'ses contaminated by spinal fluid... Ewww, writing about this makes me wanna eat nothin' but grilled peppers!