5 Napkin Burger

The burgers were really great! We got the cheddar bacon and the avocado ranch — SO GOOD! The onion rings were delish; the fries could have been better but still good. Overall it was a great meal!

The 5 napkin burger was good and the aioli sauce was interesting. I still just feel a classic burger with ketchup as the sauce tastes better though, although it was nice to try something different. 1 star off for less than amazing burger (hey it’s a burger place).
the waitress was friendly and nervous. She told us it was her first night, but she did a OK job. Service was a tad slow though and they forgot to bring my leftovers at the end. minus a star.
It looks like the place closed according to Unilocal.Although 5 napkin was OK, the competition like Bareburger and Shack Shack in NYC are better so it aint easy competing in the burger biz when you got amazing players like those on the other team. Also, unlike Bareburger i never saw deals for 5 napkin, pricey.
Good try Napkin.

I ate here last week and ordered the Tuna Burger which I spit out at first bite because it tasted and smelled rancid. I ordered a 5 napkin burger instead which was good. A few days later I saw an article saying that this location has closed down. I assume the manager didn’t order fresh tuna because they new they were going to close.
I won’t be returning to any of their locations.

Finally had the chance to stop by on a Friday night to get my burger fix on and it surely did not disappoint. It was my first time at 5 Napkin and so of course, I had to naturally go with the ‘Original’ with a side of tomato/​avocado salad and an order of fried pickles to start.
The fried pickles were different from any other fried pickle I’ve had as they were served wrapped in pastrami and then breaded and fried. It was a nice surprise when taking that first bite with just the right amount of pickle!
The tomato/​avocado salad was refreshing and was a nice complement to the star of the meal, the ‘Original’ 5 Napkin. The burger itself was juicy, tender, and bursting with flavor. It was grilled to perfection and served with all sorts of yumminess. The fries served with the burger were just as tasty and as tasty as the burgers are here, you can expect it to be just as messy (hence the «5 Napkin»)!! No worries though — the messiness is all worth the yumminess!
All in all, this spot offers a chill atmosphere, nice servers and great food!

I came here with my husband after an afternoon of drinking/​football watching. We ordered the spinach and artichoke dip which I am pretty sure my husband just stared in awe as I devoured it. I also went to town on an original burger and some cheddar tots. I’m pretty sure there was dessert involved as well but I have only the vaguest memory of that. The first few beers I had at the Beer Garden though… those I can recall more clearly. This was a great meal (I think) and the waitress (and waiter in training) were friendly. I would definitely go back!

So my daughter convinced her two friends that the simple pasta off 5 Napkins;children’s menu is the absolute best pasta. In our previous visit she managed to scarf down two bowls. This time however, one and a half bowl was her limit leaving some room for dessert – of course.
My buddy ordered a simple burger with cheddar and I ordered the sushi grade tuna open face dumplings. Both were very good; not exceptional. The burgers are made with very good quality meat and generally cooked to specification.
Our preoccupied hostess was pleasant and our waitress was delightfully spunky. In short 5 Napkins in Long Island City offer quality food at reasonable prices and is kids friendly. We’re regulars!

So, I hate to do this, but yesterday was one of the worst dining experiences I have ever had. Let me preface this by saying, I have been to this specific 5 Napkin Burger for brunch, lunch, and dinner a few times before. The food is good, but there are better places to get a burger in astoria.
We sat down for a late lunch yesterday and there was only one waitress. As such the hostess decided she would help out and take our order. I’ve worked in the service industry before. I know she was being helpful, but stick to your job. We waited 35 minutes for an appetizer and two salads (yes salads).
#1) Appetizer came out with our meal. This is a huge pet peeve of mine. An appetizer is served first, it’s common sense.
#2) They screwed up my girlfiend’s order. Instead of turkey there was lamb, and instead of dressing on the side they dressed her salad with a vinagrette (she asked for ranch). When the error was pointed out, the hostess, picked up the plate, said nothing, and we had to call her back to let her know that we wanted to order a different salad since they screwed this one up.
#3) Somehow we then ended up two separate waitors, neither of which had any clue that the order was screwed up and that we were still waiting on another salad (which again took a ridiculous amount of time).
#4) The check was dropped without asking whether or not we wanted anything else. I’ll tell you what I want, I want a manager to come to the table, show his face, and apologize for your screw up. I’m sorry, but what terrible business manners. Besides that, nothing was knocked off from the check.
It stinks because the salads and appeitzer (flatbread) were quite tasty, however, the key is service and the service was simply horrific.
We will not be re-​visiting this 5 Napkin for a while.

The lamb burger and the 5 Napkin burger were both delicious and the fries were on point.
Servers were quick, efficient, and knew their stuff.
Beer? Damn expensive! Bottles and drafts seem to be a solid $ 2 more than most other places in the area for the same stuff. Since it is a old school diner ambiance, its not like they are trying to be fancy. Who knows.
They seem to have a good HH special. If I can ever get out of work early enough, I will give it a try.
*Another thing, they have discount movie tickets… so if you want to make up for spending a little extra on your beer, go catch a movie next door and have a lovely night!

Had dinner here after visiting the museum of the moving image across the street. Is Astoria, looks of great food options in the area, but I’ve heard good things about this place.
the place: On the corner, outdoor seating (always a plus) and inside very industrial style mixed with shiny woods. Hug beautiful wood bar inside, with lots of seating. Booths, tables, pretty big spot.
the food: burgers and sandwiches… they have everything… buffalo chicken sandwich, turkey and veggie burgers, lamb, Mahi and even Ahi tuna sandwich options. They also have plates, like chicken and waffles, a long list of different salad options and tacos. I went with the 5 napkin burger. Great selection of sides, bbq fries, onion rings, and sweet potato fries. I went with the cheesy tater tots. My medium rare burger was DELISH! Juicy, tasty, and cooked to perfection! Tater tots were pretty good too, only got a few so not sure… lol
The service: Our waitress seemed a little confused. Get this, no napkins on the table at «5 Napkin Burger»…we had to ask and then wait for some. Dessert, not on the menu, shakes are only on the kids menu. Overall waitress manage to get it together and do a pretty good job, especially when trying to «remember» what there dessert selection was.
the price: Question… Do we have to be in the city to pay city prices???
the answer at this spot is NO! Trying to be more of a cloth napkin trendy spot (rather than a queens burger joint), burgers are $ 12-​$ 16. Portion is small, any substitutions are extra $, then I get 5 tater tots. Listen don’t be calling me cheap! If this place was in NYC, I would understand.
Honestly, I didn’t think this place was worth it, although the burger was really good… maybe with a groupon!

DISCLAIMER: My review is definitely a little biased due to the hour in which I entered the store.
On a Monday night I arrived to this place at approximately 20 – 30 minutes before they were suppose to close. The restaurant was actually empty at the time except for one guy at the bar and I specifically asked one of the workers if it was okay if a group of three could dine in, and they said yes. Now, since I basically asked for permission and was granted, I would expect service to be the same as any other hour of the day except it was not.
They rushed everything, they gave us our menus really quickly and checked back practically every second to see if we were ready yet. which we were not! And then when we finally got our food, (which we got fairly quickly) all the burgers which were requested to be medium, were all differently cooked! We seriously had every range from rare to well done on our table! Why ask for how we want our meat to be cooked if you are just going to do it however you like? But, I got the lamb burger and it was very good. The cheese was very overwhelming to me (I forgot what type of cheese) so I basically scraped all the cheese off my burger and just ate it plain. I was actually disappointed to find they include no lettuce and tomato in my burger? But it was still good. All the burgers come with a side of regular fries and if you wanted a different side then it was an extra 2.50.
My friends got the avocado burger which they loved! I don’t have much to say about it because I’m allergic to avocado and so I didn’t try it.
Now in terms of service, first the waitress comes by asking if she could just place the check on the table so she doesn’t lose it, and insisted that we don’t have to rush. But then maybe 10 minutes later she came back and asked if we could pay because she wanted to close the computer. Inconsistency is a terrible trait. So of course, naturally after paying we just asked for our leftovers to be wrapped up and we left.
The food was definitely a 4 star and I do want to give this place another chance so I’ll try to come back at an earlier hour and revise my review. But for what it’s worth, this place is a little bit expensive considering what you’re really getting is a burger and a side of fries for 20 $. At least there’s candles on every table, always makes me happy to see one!

I didn’t want to go to one of the mainstream restaurants like Applebees or Unos that were nearby, so I wandered down 35^th Avenue sure of a nice little diner/​restaurant that I had been to many years ago nearby. While I ended up not finding the place, I did happen to stumble upon Five Napkin Burger. (Which I have a feeling that I had the place right but it was already taken over by them.)
What grabbed our attention was the sign on the board outside, saying that they had a ‘SLIDER HAPPY HOUR’. Now how can anyone ever go wrong with a happy hour special that included sliders?
At the bar (or high top tables), you can participate in the Happy Hour. $ 2 Sliders and $ 4 drafts from 4−7pm. With sliders, you can never eat just one. I had 6 sliders and an order of 4 pork taquitos, each of which were $ 2. I’ll have to say the Taquitos were more of my favorite than the sliders, and would have been content if the orders were reversed.
Overall, I really enjoyed my experience at Five Napkin Burger. I will have to try out their full burger and fries meal plus their brunch menu. They have a number of locations around the city but if you are in Astoria, I highly recommending checking them out.

For people who crave a juicy,“can i even fit this into my mouth?!”, sauce all over your face, big a$$ burger. 5-​napkins has got you covered!
For burger lovers who are pleased by even the mere scent of a burger joint, they’ll be happy here.
For those who really are not into the burger mania, you will still have plenty of decent options to choose from… and yes they even have sushi! (not that i recommend getting sushi from a place known for burgers.) If you don’t see any japanese men cutting up rolls, dont get the sushi.
Saying that, I really like the location of this 5-​napkin burger. it’s right across the street from The moving Image Musuem AND theres actually decent amount of parking in this area of astoria. Shocking stuff!
We came here for a last minute date night and we enjoyed our time. It seems that many Unilocalers complain about the service but we actually had a great experience. Our server was always around but not annoyingly so.
What we ate:
— Wasabi deviled eggs: I’ve never ordered deviled eggs when out to eat, ever but these were surprisingly tasty. I say go for it!
— Pretzel sticks with bavarian cheese sauce– Be warned, these are good but they only gave us 2 pretzel sticks! Thats a pure tease. As that girl from the AT&T commerical says.“BUT WE WANT MORE”!
–Original 5-​napkin burger– My boyfriend ordered this bad boy and i stole a sneaky bite. It was very juicy and had a nice smokey flavor.
–Classic cheese burger– I was boring and ordered a cheese burger with gruyère. Standard and pretty good.
Probably the one thing that dissapointed us were the fries that the burgers come with, they were literally mcdonalds fries. Order the sweet potato or another side because these were just not good! A place known for burgers really should have really good fries to go with them, its just a must!
Overall this spot is awesome for a casual date, espeically when you can walk right over the museum after your bellies are nice and full!

A bunch of us dropped in here after the recent Unilocal Queens Spectacular for a bit of after-​partying.
There were about a dozen of us and we had the whole bar area to ourselves. Typical 5 Napkin location as they all have the same look, menu, and similar layout. After stuffing ourselves silly on food and drink during the Unilocal event there was no way I was going to order a burger. Just some booze as that is always easier to gulp down. And fries. Can always eat fries when buzzed.
Not much to report here other than the french fries were pretty decent, and the drinks we chose were refreshing and strong. Good attentive bartender that took care of us with some mojito/​lemonade cocktails that packed a nice punch. Had a few rounds then we headed over to the Astor Room for more after-​party debauchery.
Will definitely hit this place up again for lunch or dinner after taking in the Museum of the Moving Image across the street one day.

4−7pm happy hour with $ ⁴⁄₅ beers and $ 2 sliders (regular, turkey & veggie). CAN YOU GO WRONG? NOPE
I tell this to you as my friend, ask for extra aoli and sriracha. Mix them together to make the most glorious spread on your sliders. Yummmmmmmm
I honestly don’t know what else is on the menu. It doesn’t matter.

Horrible overpriced food slightly tempered by lovely service.
Granted, we didn’t order any burger. Instead, we tried:
1/​the unique sounding wasabi deviled eggs with sriracha and crispy rice– tasted like it was barely thawed from the refrigerator. obviously premade hours in advance. The egg white had zero flavor, i didn’t taste the wasabi and the little crispy rice balls were incongruous with the rest of the flavor profile. A cold, flavorless, premade mishmash that was an utter fail.
2/​edamame– why this and other japanese items were on the menu was strange. that said, if you’re going to offer such disparate types of food– burgers and sushi– you probably do both really well. Right? Wrong. The seasoning on the edamame was all wrong. They should have just used sea salt or japanese pepper assortment and called it a day. Instead, a terrible tasting seasoning mix practically destroys a practically foolproof food.
3/​arugula salad with 5 shrimp– literally, 5 straightened out grilled shrimp tossed on top of a heaping pile of seasoned arugula with a few tomate wedges and thin red onion slices. bleh.
4/​chicken tacos– extremely mediocre with a side of sweet and sick tasting slaw. I literally spit it out.
The service was the only positive experience here. Water glasses refilled, polite. Maybe it was just our waiter. Otherwise, what a waste.

Only one napkin required
I went to for the happy hour ($ 2 sliders and $ 4 drafts, at the bar only), I ordered the 3 versions (veggie w 1000 island dressing/​pickles, turkey w/​bbq sauce, beef with aioli mayonnaise/​caramelized onions)…the beef was a mini version of the 5napkin burger
They were nothing special, but what else can one expect for two dollars. Although, I give credit to the veggie burger for not being as bad as I expected it to be.
These three perfectly satiated my appetite. With that said, I couldn’t imagine having gotten the regular size burger which comes out in huge portions. It was a nice post museum linner.
PS: How perfectly placed is this location? right across the street from a busy museum ful of kids and families. They should get a star for the planning on that.

Glad to find a place to park, a cool location and sitting outside in Brooklyn just has a cool feel to it.
Also plenty of parking options on the street, just had to circle awhile to find one.
We just missed the kids happy hour where his meal would have been free and were a bit early for the $ 2 slider happy hour so the prices were a bit steep.
$ 15 for a regular burger for the man and the same for a veggie burger for me is a couple of bucks more than I would like to spend on burgers but I went with it.
$ 7 for a kids burger (a $ 2 slider with a handful of fries) is outrageous, it was very plain but he enjoyed it.
The burgers were only average, I got extra guacamole which wasn’t worth the extra money either.
I have had way better veggie burger, the same with the regular ones, it was pretty dissapointing.
The service also leaves alot to be desired. She just wasn’t very accomidating or made us feel welcome at all.
The interior is cool, they really tried to be innovative, I just didn’t fall for the hype.
Plenty of places to get better food for less money.

I was really torn about how many starts to give this place… I’ve been here now a solid 3 times and I’m really motivated to give them a 4 — but the service here is really quite lacking. Each time I’ve been here it’s been for their happy hour at the bar so perhaps the table service is an improvement — but sometimes the bartenders do things like roll their eyes when you ask to see the menu, pretend they don’t see you and forget to pour you that beer you ordered…
Came here with some gal pals on this past Saturday night during their 9pn till close happy hour and the female bartender on staff actually rolled her eyes when 2 of my friends pulled out credit cards, she also couldn’t add — it was funny, yet sad really.
Now onto the positives and why I will return again and again even if the bartenders are sometimes (there is a really cool guy ‘tender I’ve never had a problem with) a bit… off…their HAPPY HOUR is great! Especially if you’re pregaming and want to get some food in (or if you’re winding down your night, keep in mind they close pretty early — last call was around 1am).
Their happy hour menu includes: $ 2 sliders with Gruyère cheese, and their (HEAVENLY!) rosemary aioli, $ 2 FOR 4 (VERY mini!) pulled pork taquitos, cheddar tots (quite yummy!) and .50 buffalo wings. I believe that draught beers are $ 4 and house wines are like $ 6 (don’t quote me here).
Atmosphere music includes top 40 rock/​pop and some good indie tunes. The place is especially cute for a not-​too-​expensive date option before (or after) hitting up a movie at Astoria Kaufman or before heading to Studio Square or something so in terms of location they’re definitely winning… also I’m really interested in checking out their brunch sometime…
Maybe one day I’ll come back and review and bump it up to 4 stars, but for now they need to work on customer service at the bar.

SWEET MOTHER OF J_​_​_​_​!
Burgers here are so tender, Juicy.
I love their side dishes, Spinach was my favorite!
Sweet potato fries were good too.
What else can I say… (It’s a burger place!)
I prefer the Astoria one because is less crowd, couple of bucks cheaper, and no rush!

We stopped in after seeing Inception – still partially in an alternate reality,…we really hoped the dream would continue with a dream-​like dinner. Not so much. Don’t get me wrong… the burgers are pretty good:
— But certainly not worth the price
— If you substitute fries for onion rings – it’s $ 1 extra and you get FOUR onion rings
— The «soft» buns can’t hold up to the burger past the first two bites — GET NEW BUNS!
— Lengthy bottled beer selection – not so much on the draught
— The fries are not impressive
— Great service and unique décor
I don’t have a problem with 5 Napkin. It’s an upscale burger joint. However, if you haven’t been to Sunswick 150 yards down 34^th Avenue — you’re going to get a way better burger, way better beer selection (and way cheaper) and have a lot more fun for about 40% less on your wallet.
2.5 Unilocal stars