By Anastasha Echavarri
News Editor

Five Guys, a burger joint located in the Westford Valley Marketplace, has customers lining up outside their doors to get a taste of their cuisine. But what makes Five Guys so different from other fast food restaurants such as McDonalds, Burger King, or even Wendy’s?

The restaurant is a small and busy eatery where small groups of people can gather together. Because there is little room inside the restaurant, it is recommended that you take your meal to-go. If you do stay, you can appreciate the simple white and red decorative tiles which give the restaurant a retro feel.

Five Guys also has two machines with a touch-screen that allow you to customize your very own soda drink. Some of the many flavors you’re able to choose from includes: Sprite, Fanta, Hi-C, Coca Cola, Diet Coke, Minute Maid, and Powerade. There are 24 options in total and endless combinations.

Scattered throughout the restaurant are boxes of fresh peanuts for hungry customers to snack on while they wait for their food. Peanuts seem to be a staple at Five Guys, because unlike other fast food restaurants, they cook their food in peanut oil.

Several burger joints have added items to their menu such as wraps, salads, biscuits, and more in order to appeal to a greater target audience. However, Five Guys has only 5 categories of food from which to choose from. They only have burgers, hot dogs, veggie or grilled cheese sanwiches, french fries, and sodas.

French fries are either cajun or regular. The regular size of fries goes for the reasonable price of  $2.99 and has so many french fries you can easily share amongst friends and split the price.

If one had to choose between cajun and regular, then the cajun fries easily surpasses the other in the flavor category. Not only are they salty and savory, but they also have a smoky and spicy flavor to them that goes very well with the the rest of the meal.

But what makes Five Guys so different from the other fast food chains is that there are so many choices and flavors for just one burger. There may not be breakfast sandwiches, biscuits, or salads on the menu, but the vast number of condiments available for the burgers and hot dogs can make every trip to Five Guys completely different.

You can either have a burger with one or two patties as well as all the toppings you want. The most expensive burger on the menu is the bacon cheeseburger which costs $7.29. Although this tastes delicious, the flavors of the cheese and the bacon are somewhat lost if several toppings are then added onto the burger as well.

Condiments range from the every day toppings such as relish, ketchup, and mustard to more exotic and luxurious condiments such as jalapenos, green peppers, and grilled onions.

With about 20 different toppings to consider putting on your burger, you could either have a sweet burger with grilled onions, mushrooms, and lettuce, or a spicy and zesty one with different varities of peppers and hot sauce. You create your burger the way you want it.

So although they are merely a burger joint, Five Guys offers the Westford community a great, cheap, and quality meal for the working moms who don’t want to have to swing by the grocery store and for friends who want to hang out somewhere after school.