OK, it was only a burger, but it was a burger for which Londoners are willing to queue for half their lunch hour…

It’s the third week of the longest heatwave in seven years. The heat has subdued my usual voracious lunchtime appetite (usually for mixed meat rice at Young Cheng in Lisle St) and I have taken to walking around Covent Garden looking for cool summer clothes and grabbing sushi on my way back to work (at Tobiko in Garrick Street, the best takeaway sushi I’ve found – they use real crabmeat, not sticks). At the top of St Martin’s Lane on the corner of Long Acre, there’s always a queue of people outside the new burger joint from the States, Five Guys. My rule being ‘I never queue for food or entertainment’, I’d nonchalantly pass by thinking ‘it’s only a burger!’ (I don’t actually like burgers – too much bread involved). But today, my curiosity got the better of me and I thought I’d see what all the fuss was about. But when they said it would take 20 minutes to queue outside and 10 minutes inside, I was about to walk away when I remembered I was a journalist with a food blog (the sun must’ve incinerated my brain cells). So I blagged a free burger without having to queue. (When one is not a Fay Maschler or a Giles Coren, one must be grateful for anything.)

A nice American man took my order – small burger with bacon, pickle, ketchup & mustard (but you can get 249,999 other combinations, I’m told) with chips & coke. He then led me to the Starship Enterprise of drinks machines that dispensed 150 types of cold drinks – soon to be upped to 250. I was thrilled to have the choice of about eight diet cokes! I chose lime but was disappointed – you couldn’t taste the lime. Why not just provide a wedge of lime, I say.

I then waited for my order to be called out sitting on a stool next to sackfuls of peanuts – allergy sufferers keep away! A few minutes later my number was called and I was handed a brown paper bag by some nice burger makers in red.

So would I queue half an hour for it? No. Bun was too limp, and as I said, I am not a burger fan. But all the ingredients were just right – beef was meaty, bacon crispy, pickle crunchy, mustard kosher American, and the chips tasted of potato.

Five Guys just opened this month, and the queue will probably last as long as the hype. It may just be a fad, but I’m glad you can get a decent American burger in London for £6 or so. A little bit of New York in London. And it’s probably the only fast food joint with three bouncers at the door.

I strolled back to the office sipping my giant cup of lime coke feeling mildly gleeful of my free lunch without having to queue, and read that the Guardian’s fashion editor had lunch with Kate Moss at the Ivy Club. Slight job envy crept in, especially as her write-up was so good. Hey, if you can’t be them, copy them – so here are five places I’ve eaten in in the last few weeks (in the style of Fay Mashler’s Evening Standard column):

1 Scott’s, New Row, Covent Garden – salt beef on rye, £7.20, with about half a pound of salt beef. Nearly as good as the Salt Beef Bar at Selfridges but not quite.

2 Young Cheng, Lisle St, Soho – crispy pork & choi sum rice, mixed seafood rice, dim sum, congee… Full of Chinese customers. Clean, fast, huge portions.

3 Colbert, Sloane Square – best silver service croissant & coffee outside Paris.

4 Harvey Nichols 5th floor, Knightsbridge – for bubble tea (the new drink craze in London), poshest Yo Sushi, rose wine from Brad & Angelina’s French estate and best of all, organic Cachaca.

5 Notes, St Martin’s Lane – tastiest salad in town. Authentic arty/creative vibe.

The best drink I had this week was a £5 bottle of chilled Cava from Tesco Express in Trafalgar Square shared with friends by the Monet-esque pond in St James’s Park, in the cool breeze under a tree, escaping the oppressive city heat just 200 metres away!