Five Guys, Gangnam branch

Monday evening, I met my buddy Charles for dinner at 7 p.m. close to Gangnam station, and we walked a few meters over to the Gangnam branch of Five Guys, the latest US burger sensation to hit South Korea. A lot of these places come and go after landing on the peninsula, and many of them change a bit in the translation from a US environment to a Korean one. Two things I noticed quickly about the Korean Five Guys: (1) I didn't immediately see double burgers on the menu (even though my ticket said "2 Patties," as you can see below... I think what happened was that I got two thin smash patties, which was fine since I love smash burgers, but the US Five Guys normally does thicker patties), and (2) the "little fries" I ordered weren't nearly as plentiful as what you get at an American Five Guys. And as I anticipated, my dinner was expensive at around W40,000 just for me (including my Coke). The same meal would be about $25 in the States. W40,000 comes out to about $27 at the current exchange rate, so I guess it's not that much more expensive. Huh.

There was no mu-in kiosk; all ordering was to be done in person. I got what I'd typically get at an American Five Guys: a bacon cheeseburger and a bacon hot dog, both with lettuce, tomatoes, BBQ sauce, and mayo; plus an order of small fries. It all tasted plausibly like the US-based Five Guys, so the staff has been trained well. But the expense of the place means I won't be coming here that often. I'm also left to wonder how long Five Guys is going to last in Korea. There are already other burger joints here, like Shake Shack, not to mention the well-established McDonald's and Burger King branches that metastasized everywhere long ago. On top of that are the Korean burger joints that sell everything from legitimately American-style burgers to more idiosyncratically Korean-style burgers (has the Japanese cheese-fried "halved" cheeseburger—a.k.a., Teppan Cheeseburger or Cheeseburger Fondue—become a thing in Korea yet?).  Competition is fierce, merciless, and eternal.

Charles (who, skinny guy that he is, ordered a much more modest meal that didn't even include fries but did include a shake) and I talked about academia (Charles is pulled in a dozen directions as an SNU prof), married life, exercise, and the immediate future; he's back to doing his HIIT routine, and this week, I'm tentatively back to my resistance training (plus walking, plus staircase work). Below are some photos of my food. It was good.

When the lady asked what toppings I wanted on my burger, I told her mayo, BBQ sauce, lettuce, and tomatoes. She asked if I wanted the same on my dog, and I unthinkingly said yes, but it turned out fine.

This Five Guys was a bit stingy with its fries—which they didn't give me when my order first came out, so I had to go back and ask—but the fries themselves were pretty good.

I had to take a photo of the politically incorrect plastic straw. We're killing sea life, people! (Good.)

With the hot dog defeated, I turned my menacing, tyrannosaur gaze toward my trembling burger. My memory is that it was a single patty, but this photo seems to be showing two smash patties, which makes sense since my ticket also says "2 Patties," as you'll see below.

I peel the burger back to reveal the innards. Its misery will be over soon.

Do you see "2 Patties" up top? And, bizarrely, "1 Hot Dogs," plural.

Charles sampled my two cakes and pronounced them "not bad," and he offered some suggestions for how to improve the chocolate cake, which was dense and very fudgey, but he was pretty sure his wife would likely refuse the rum cake, which Charles judged to be too rummy for her tastes. All in all, it was a great dinner, not to mention a new/old experience eating at a Five Guys for the first time in a million years. I'll be back here, I'm sure, but I might not take the subway at the dinner hour: the Shin Bundang Line was jam-packed, a veritable petri dish of sickness. So: a cab next time. As it was, I cabbed back to my place.