Jason Goes to White Castle

I haven’t been doing much on the eating and travelling front lately, but Jason’s been on the road near Chicago and sent me these photos from his cell phone. He has a strange affinity for mini burgers, so he felt compelled to pull off the interstate highway because he saw a sign for White Castle.

Living in Canada, we knew little about the fast-food chain other than it’s the inspiration for the hilarious Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.

I did a little Internet research. White Castle uses frozen square patties. It cooks them using its “steam grilled” method. The patties are placed on top of a bed of dehydrated onions as heat and steam rises up from the grill. They’re not flipped. If you look closely you can see four holes in the patty. That’s to speed up the cooking.

So here’s Jason’s (paraphrased) account of his White Castle experience:

“The girl that came and helped me was in the middle of scrubbing some kind of bucket… Then she went over to the steam bath and started flipping burgers.

The hamburgers were 51 cents each. It was just a plain old dinner bun, and the patty was so thin. I ordered four of them. They looked just pathetic.

The burgers taste like boiled meat – boiled dog food, if I had to guess what it tastes like, I’d guess that.

I also noticed they had some kind of other sandwiches that looked like they were made of chicken nuggets, I bet they were gross too.”

I guess I didn’t miss much.

White Castle, various locations in north-central and northeastern U.S.