Five Guys and a Duck

A few weeks ago, while in Jacksonville to drop my son off at college, I stopped off with my family at a popular new fast food chain that he recommended: Five Guys.

Five Guys claims to make better hamburgers than other chains, and apparently a lot of people agree with them. A restaurant just recently opened in southwest Gainesville on Archer Road, with such an instant following that people trying to find parking in adjacent lots have come back to their cars finding them booted (Gainesville parking badly sucks, as I have written previously). Well, I have my own experience about Five Guys.

The Five Guys we went to in Jacksonville was located in Town Center, site of many stores and restaurants. Inside, it was very noisy with poor seating. We decided we would take our food outside where there was more room. But the noise level was still high, with their oldies rock music blaring at us wherever we went. The prices were much higher than McDonald's or Burger King but lower than sit-in places like Chili's or TGIF. But I wasn't at all impressed with the burgers and thought that their fries were actually quite lousy.

I resented paying five bucks for a hamburger that I could have gotten for less than half the price at other places. At least in a sit-in restaurant, someone seats you and you can relax, appreciate the surroundings, and have others serve you. That merits the higher tab at the end. But we had to wait at Five Guys for our high-priced order standing there just like we would at Mac or BK. And their menu was pretty much limited to burgers and fries, with few other choices.

Trying to find something positive out of the experience while sitting there wolfing down my lunch, I noticed a little brown duck waddle through an opening and begin to cover the floor around the outdoor diners, looking for scraps. It was quite tame, as newly seated customers would attract its attention and it would make its way over to them. I kept looking back at that opening to see if more ducks would enter, but this guy apparently had his own personal territory marked out!

Unfortunately, the Five Guys in Gainesville doesn't have their own resident duck to entertain the suckers--I mean customers-- who patronize them. I wonder whether this fad will wear off, or whether other people really do have a different sense as to what tastes good and what constitutes a good dining experience.