Dadaluma83

Its probably a good thing Five Guys doesnt have a drive thru. Those french fries will stink up your car for 2 weeks if you bring them in the car.

pinniped

I just consider all of that "fast food". I've never thought about separate categories for places that have a drive-thru. (I'm unfamiliar with Pei Wei.)

In the "better than the megachains" burger category, Five Guys, Culver's, Smashburger, Shake Shack, Whataburger, In n Out, and Fatburger all could be reasonably compared to each other. I'm also partial to Burgerville but I've never seen it outside of the Portland area so not sure if it's big enough to count. (It is fast food and is a local/regional chain though.)

corky

Before? There already is a whataburger thread in Dining Buzz.

DenverBrian

It's a fast-casual version of P.F. Changs. They are suprisingly not present in the KC/Chicago area.

kale73

MissJ

I love Burgerville. It's mainly around Portland but there are some in southern Washington as well. They go north almost to Olympia.

pinniped

Man, if that thing ever decides to really expand, it would quickly develop an In-N-Out style fanbase. That is, one where people who live outside its footprint know about it and go out of their way to eat there when they are in proximity to one.

Buster

I also love Burgerville. The seasonal yogurt shakes are the bomb.

DenverBrian

And then all the faux food snobs would go "Ew, it's a chain! We can't possibly eat there!"

MissJ

I would punch someone for a fresh strawberry yogurt shake or even a chocolate hazelnut right now.

rustykettel

MaxBuck

I've not had the chance to sample Shake Shack (line has been too long every time I've been in NYC), but neither In-n-Out nor Whataburger has really appealed to me, and Five Guys I refer to as Greaseburger. What a heart-attack-on-a-bun those people turn out. In-n-Out has to rank as one of the truly spectacular disappointments of my culinary life, given all the hype I heard before I actually experienced their product.

My personal favorite fast hamburgers are served up by Wendy's and Steak 'n Shake, but they're nowhere near as good as the burgers I can get at any number of local bars and pubs in and around Columbus.

As for fries, I've yet to find a burger place that does what I call a great job with them. My favorites by far are the ones City Barbecue turns out, with skin on and a nice brown color from being cooked in superhot grease. Yum. (I have to admit Five Guys fries are not bad.)

tmiw

I wouldn't say the best since the only place I've been to with green chiles on burgers has been Blake's, but they are pretty good.

As for OP, I'd probably rank Shake Shack as first, then In-N-Out, then Whataburger (yes, I know, blasphemous since I grew up in CA ). While it would be nice if Shake Shack's burgers were larger, I already have a hard time justifying going to any burger place all that often thanks to the calories.

work2fly

I spent some time living in German Village and working in downtown Columbus in the 1990s. Thurman's, the Old Mohawk and even the original Max and Erma's couldn't be beat for a killer burger.

The original Wendy's on Broad St. would crank out some fantastic burgers on a level In-n-Out could only hope for. I suspect some things have changed since then

pinniped

Yeah, this is a struggle for most burger places. Even accepting that their own style is good if they do it properly, they often don't do the fries properly. McDonald's probably gets closest, although my sample size for them is disproportionately airports where there's always enough traffic to know they aren't sitting there for long.

My problem is that my favorite style is a British-style pub chip, a little bit well done, and fast food joints in the U.S. all seem to go with a thinner fry. I lived next to a chippy in Wales for a year that *always* cooked 'em a little crispier than a typical British chip, and I loved that. To this day, I compare all fries/chips to that place, and it's kind of unfair.