Why Five Guys Probably Won't Grill Your Burger In Mustard
If you've been to Five Guys at least once, you can probably name a few things about the chain off the top of your head. The taste of salt from the peanuts, the smell of sizzling beef patties, or if you're a real Five Guys fanatic, you can go on at length about its "secret menu."
Well, it's not so much a secret menu, as it's just a wide variety of ways that you can customize your burger, fries, and milkshake. Just a few of these examples, per Restaurant Clicks, include a Patty Melt, which is a grilled cheese variation of the cheeseburger, a Burger Bowl (or burger salad if you will), and well-done fries.
Hold on a second. Doesn't the concept of a "not-so-secret menu" sound kind of familiar? Those who live on the West Coast probably know that the burger chain, In-N-Out, practices a similar method of "creative fry cookery." In fact, aside from being exclusive to California and its surrounding states, In-N-Out is legendary for its secret menu. According to Eat This, Not That!, you can order items like the Flying Dutchman (a burger that's just cheese sandwiched between two beef patties), Animal-Style Fries (fries slathered in cheese, signature sauce, and caramelized onions), and a burger with the beef grilled in mustard.
While these all sound like things you can get at any Five Guys as well, the fast casual burger joint draws the line at grilling your burger in mustard.
Five Guys will have you adding your own mustard
According to Thrillist, if you were to ask the employees at your local Five Guys to prepare you an "Animal-Style" burger the way In-N-Out does, chances are they'd probably decline to grill it in mustard, politely, of course.
You might be asking yourself "Why is that? They can make a cheeseburger as a grilled cheese sandwich, but can't do mustard?" While Five Guys didn't elaborate as to why they don't grill with mustard, we can certainly guess a few reasons they'd refuse.
This In-N-Out style might be a bit too messy for Five Guys and they'd probably have to wipe the grill down after each mustard-grilled burger. That will take time away from grilling all the other customer's burgers, making this an inefficient practice. Another reason could be that the company wants to distance itself from In-N-Out's menu and stand out with its own innovative items. After all, they don't want to be known as the guys who copied everything from In-N-Out. It's only reasonable they'd want to try and put their own spin on things.
While you can't exactly get an In-N-Out Animal-Style burger at Five Guys, in the long run, perhaps it's for the best and there's a variety of other ways that Five Guy's take on the Animal-Style Burger differs from the In-N-Out version. In the end, what matters is that you enjoy the meal, well-done fries and all.