We do clean up nice, don’t we?
Last weekend was our friends Laura & John’s wedding in Tennessee, so we got up at the ass-crack of dawn on Friday to head down to Oakland airport to fly out. Flights to Nashville were largely uneventful and mostly on-time, so we were able to make the drive from there to Knoxville in time to meet friends for dinner. Thanks to an overly-generous pair of bartenders who comped us a lot of drinks, we had even more fun at the restaurant’s bar afterward (it was adjacent to our hotel so no one had to drive).
Saturday was off to a lazy start, but by lunchtime I was on a mission. A mission for burgers at Five Guys. I have fond memories of FIve Guys from my time living in Arlington, VA, after college. At the time, it was only a tiny, local chain with four or five stores in Northern Virginia. Ah, but what burgers they were – big, greasy, with lots and lots of options for toppings, all included in the price. The fries were sold in massive portions, freshly cut, with information provided as to where the day’s potatoes were sourced.
So I was surprised when I recently started to hear friends in other parts of the country talk about Five Guys. Sure enough, in 2002 the company began expanding nationally. Alas, there are only two in California, in the south. But I did notice one not far from where we were in Tennessee, so I made it a plan to get there. Of course, then I worried I’d oversold them to Sean, or that my memory would be better than the reality. Fortunately, we were not disappointed at all – the burgers were every bit as tasty as I remember, and the fries crisp and yummy. The menu seems mostly the same, though I don’t recall whether they had smaller burgers as an option in the original stores (I always remember way more food than I needed!).
The wedding itself was lovely, at a private event facility called Butterfly Gap Retreat. It was wonderful to see old friends and meet new ones, and be able to do so in a really beautiful setting on such a happy occasion.
The happy couple lucked out with the weather because Sunday dawned dreary and rained most of the day. We had plans to meet up with three of my cousins, two of their spouses, and two kids at a local restaurant. It was great to see everyone again – other than my cousin Jennifer, who had visited Seattle in 2005, I hadn’t seen anyone in over a dozen years.
