Even better than I remember

One day I was driving down the street and saw a sign for a new eatery going in a little strip mall area not all that far from our house. It was red and white...Five something. Huh? Wait a minute. I did a quick double take. Yep, it said "Coming Soon: Five Guys Burgers and Fries." Could that be...the famous Five Guys from Alexandria, VA????

Well, as soon as I got home I hopped on their web site and sure enough, apparently Five Guys somehow chose Beaverton, Oregon as the perfect place to expand to the West Coast. (Actually, it turns out they also have a couple of random locations in California, but we won't count that.) Go figure. However, I wasn't complaining because Five Guys is known as one the best burgers in all of Washington, D.C. A couple of weeks ago Jeff and I noticed that construction was finished and they were open for business, so it quickly went on the list of potential lunch/dinner locations when we don't feeling like cooking at home - which is often.

So fast forward to this morning when we decided to take a trip to DSW Shoe Warehouse on a mission to try and find Jeff some new replacement slippers for his beloved Uggs that are just like Uggs but w/o the price tag. Knock offs, I believe is the correct term. Upon arriving in the parking lot just after 10am, which was really 11am, we discovered that the store didn't open until 11am, which it would have been if it weren't for the time change. Which all leads me to ponder - what's with this whole time change thing anyway? Does it really serve any purpose except to mess up our Sunday schedule twice a year?

Down, but not out, we decided to head to Costco instead because I needed some tortillas. Yes, you heard that right - tortillas. In case you aren't aware, Costco sells rather larger packages of some pretty top notch tortillas that you heat up yourself in a pan and then eat warm, which I do by the handful these days. Actually, I've taken to eating approximately two per day as my lunch during the week. Sometimes just plain and sometimes with a bit of Weight Watchers shredded cheese in the middle. Either way, they are quite tasty and it's a problem when we are out, which we were. Once at Costco, we pick up tortillas, some printer paper, a few bottles of wine AND just as we are headed to the checkout - guess what we spot? Yep, some men's Ugg knockoffs, and they were exactly the style we were looking for, for a whole $22! Can you say fate?

So here is the Five Guys part. After Costco, we were on the way home and decided we'd better pick up some lunch. But we both decided we didn't want anything too heavy or fattening and after going through some options, we recalled that we hadn't tried Five Guys yet. Perfect! So we head over and upon pulling up can already tell that it hasn't taken long for this place to catch on. The line was almost out the door. We were not deterred, however. We waited about 10 minutes in line before placing our "to go" order and heading home with the goods, which included two bacon cheeseburgers (one for Jeff, one for me), one hot dog with ketchup (for Ian) and a large french fries (to share).

We dug in as soon as we got home and the burgers were even better than I remembered. A nice juicy patty with perfectly melted cheese, bacon, mayo and lettuce that blended together well, some sauteed mushrooms and grilled onions - all on a bun that is soft without being too bready. Tasteeee. And then there were the hand cut french fries, which despite being slightly on the limp side are still worthy. Really, it was just the light lunch we were looking for. And the fuel we needed for an afternoon of football on TV and last-minute cramming to finish filling out our Oregon ballots - which we have vowed to drop off at the library by the end of today.

Until I write again.