Five Guys Burgers and Fries Harlow Water Gardens — Restaurant in Harlow

£36 for two medium cheeseburgers, one small cheeseburger, "chips" and three drinks would be acceptable if the food was amazing and the place was nice. Burgers were fine, but definitely not anything special. Chips are actually large potato bits, and they give you a lot of these potatoes. They're probably trying to justify their prices by giving you a lot of something, in this case cheap potatoes.

The worst bit is however the appearance of the place. If you want to charge people a lot of money for your mediocre food, please make your place worth the visit! It looks like a joke when you walk in - it's so "empty" and simple, but not minimalistic in an attractive way.

You have to sit on a wooden benches and it looks like you're visiting some cheap buffet in the early 80s.

Acceptable food (if it was half the price), awful and cheap appearance of the place - McDonald's look decent compared to it, while places in this price range serving fast food look like something tremendously luxurious!

Absolutely NOT...

I went here for the first time ever and a lovely woman serving me was very gentle and kind whilst she helped me pop my five guys cherry. The burger (bacon cheeseburger with lettuce) was good the cajun fries were exceptional, just deliberately sliding those beauties across my lips so I could lick the seasoning off was worth every mouthful. I found myself burping just for a chance to relive those cajun dusted potato heaven. Now was it worth £19, For a burger fries and a drink? Personally the burger no, the fries yes and you can add any of 15 topping for your burger so take advantage of that and the free drink refills is great but realistically how much can you really drink! I think if five guys sold that cajun seasoning in store (I know, again with the cajun fries) I would buy lots of it. Will I be going again...yes to eat those fries, I will just buy a big bag of them to eat and not share them...

I honestly was not impressed by 5 Guys. I've been to a lot of independent/small-chain burger restaurants and I was expecting this to be really great based on friends' reviews. In reality I found it only marginally better than a Burger King, except far more expensive.

The patties were quite dry (they always cook well-done) and the fillings were so-so. The double-cooked fries were nice I suppose but insufficient to rescue it in my mind.

The main reason for only two stars is that it's priced at a similar point to Byron or Honest Burger, so that's what I compare it with. It's nowhere near nice as those though. If it were cheaper then I'd be comparing it to Burger King and sure, I'd give it a higher score.

It might be the best that's available in Harlow? I've not been to any other specialist burger restaurants in town. The town could do a lot...