White Castle

The Château de Chaumont. Now picture it with burgers.

Over the past few weeks, the Burger Busters, in an effort to garner a sense of credibility and push the envelope of just what makes a burger, have dabbled in some high-class fare. From Five Guys to O'Reilly's, the Burger busters have traveled to the landmarks of hamburg style steak atop dual buns. And while the experience has been enlightening, there still resides the yearning for suitably more plebeian fare - a desire to reconnect with the roots of a tempestuous passion!

That and seriously, $9.00 a trip every week was getting sorta ridiculous.

This is what we look like these days. The empty wallet, I mean, not the breasts. You pervert.

We dismounted our griffons, strolled up to the counter and ordered our food. One of the first things we noticed about this White Castle was the diversity of the customers present. I still think that White Castle is the only place you'll see a four hundred pound trucker, an eighty year-old couple, a carload of stoners, and a straight up gangsta (complete with ghetto blaster) eating burgers in harmony. Interestingly enough, we also noticed that this particular establishment is a very clean place. Considerably cleaner than probably any Wendy's, Dairy Queen, McD's, or other fast food joint I've been to. Granted, we wouldn't eat anything off the floor, but given what sliders already have in them, I don't think it would make that much of a difference.

"Who am I kidding, I would totally eat this wonderful little morsel even if it lived on the floor" -DRD

The Bun

Then bun does its job of holding the burger together and delivering it into the mouth. However, that's really all it does. At White Castle you'll be served the starchiest of starch, the whitest of whites, the processed-est of processed, and so on. On the plus side, it does absorb the delicious, albeit mysterious, moon juices that the meat and toppings emit, which turn it into a soggy, but curiously pleasurable... thing. I'm pretty sure it's edible. A fair bun shalt receive a fair score, as decreed by the Gods (2 Dionysus 3:17).

Score: 1/3

the floppiest of floppy, the most lukewarm of lukewarms,

The Toppings

And here's where White Castle falls short. Like way short. Like a Tyrannosaurus at the human Olympics.

White Castle doesn't have toppings.

...

I'll let that sink in.

WHAAAAAAAT???!!

Okay, to be fair it has two: onions and pickles. That's it. You can get bacon, cheese, a spicy pepper they claim is a jalapeño, and even a variety of scary barbeque-esque sauces, but those all cost extra, and really shouldn't, so I don't even want to include those out of spite. Yeah I know.

On the bright side the toppings they had were decent. The onion bits that they spread over the bun and cook the patties on are pretty chill, in that they give the burger most of its flavor and has a pretty damn good taste. On the other hand, the pickles are a lot more variable because they can range from large slices to the little nubs on the end of the pickle that everyone knows are the redheaded stepchildren of the shriveled-up cucumber world. They still have a decent taste but you just don't know if you're going to get any of it in your mouth in any given bite.

It's like this fool in pickle form. Sorry if it offends you. Who am I kidding--no I'm not.

The cheese, like the bun, has a generic taste. It does add to the burger but it's just a thin layer of cheese nothing special or fancy about it. Because White Castle lacked even the basic toppings of lettuce and tomatoes, not to mention ketchup and mustard we had to give them a zero. What they had was decent, but they couldn't meet the requirements. Speaking of meeting the meat...

Score:0/5

So mediocre-to-bad you can't even drive.

The Patty

The patty is a square cut of meat, so Wendy's isn't the only burger joint that doesn't cut corners. In regards to taste and texture, the taste is surprisingly like meat, and the texture is surprisingly unlike Styrofoam peanuts. To give a comparison, it's probably a little bit better than Burgers, Dogs, and Fries, and a little bit worse than a Wendy's patty. It's also stupidly small, which is understandable for how cheap it is, but is still sometimes obnoxious when you finish your burger in five bites. Granted, this is pretty unimpressive, but it is fully functional, and will ooze delicious animal juices when you put it in your mouth The patty isn't the greatest, but it isn't the worst meat you can have by any stretch of the imagination.

Score:2/5

Yup, that's pretty dern small.

So, here's the burger score, conveniently totaled!

Bun: 1
Toppings: 0
Patty: 2 +
-------------3

White Castle receives a burger score of 3/16

Holy crap! That's really underwhelming for a joint that overall, we really enjoyed--not just for the hilarious atmosphere, but also for the pretty delicious, craveable food! However, we still have some tilt points yet to award. A record number, in fact! First, White Castle has the most adventurous, wildly varied menu of side dishes I have ever seen, ranging from french fries, to sweet potato fries, to mozzarella sticks, to onion chips, to clam strips, to chicken rings. You name it, they've probably processed it and put it into an interesting geometric shape. That's worth a tilt point!

Even the pretty-damn-good fries are crinkle cut! How exciting!

Furthermore, the assortment of dranks is very, very impressive. The coffee is really good (who would have thought?!), as are the creamy, thick milkshakes. In addition, another particularly enigmatic drank adds to White Castle's oddly charming sketchiness. That drank is the Barq's red cream soda, straight from the fountain, which you can only get at White Castle. If you've ever wanted a liquid popsicle, look no further. This bad boy will have you jittering on the craziest sugar high you've ever had. I'd say that each of those incredibly solid dranks are worth three incredibly solid half points of tilt!

HOLY SHIT THAT'S FLUORESCENT

However, the most important tilt we can give to White Castle is a point and a half for burger synergy. For those unfamiliar with the term, it's simply the tilt point we give to burgers that go above and beyond the call of duty by being greater than the sum of its parts. I'm sure we could all agree that eating any one part of a White Castle without the rest would be complete shit. However, when you put that curiously absorbent bun on the wonderful mixture of meat, onions, pickles and cheese, something wonderful has been created.

When you're in the mood for it.

And you don't mind the... "after effects..."

This guy right here doesn't mind the "after effects." He fights through them like a man. Just look at how happy he is.

So, when you add it all up, that's a whopping tilt score of 4!

White Castle earns an aggregate score of

7/16(21 if including potential tilt points)


So, if you're in the mood for it, and you don't really mind a slightly disgusting quality to your food, or you've just never tried it, I would totally recommend White Castle, if only to experience it once before you decide you hate it. It's fun and delicious!

Peace out, yo.

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