[Sca-cooks] White Castle, was Green Beans, was Turkey (long)

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Sue Clemenger:
>Nope.  Never seen a White Castle ad. Don't have them (or the hamburgers)
>out here.
>Do they actually taste good, or are they just some sort of weird
>cultural icon?
>--Maire "I'm not curious enough to eat one" NiNuanain

They are the ne plus ultra of weird cultural icon, and I cannot
imagine anyone, from anywhere on the planet, actually eating them
because they like them. I imagine it's a little like eating balut; in
part, it's to show you're tough. I realize this may sound harsh, but
it's true: compared to White Castle burgers, McDonald's or even
Burger King are of a sufficiently ambrosial nature as to make mere
humans unworthy of them.

Okay, as long as I'm warming to my topic:

First of all, they aren't browned, they're steamed on a gizmo like an
air-hockey board that shoots out a bazillion little jets of steam.
For years the subject of holes in White Castle hamburgers was food
for much speculation about cost-cutting measures, i.e. making a
burger seem larger when actually using less meat. They even had an ad
campaign that mentioned that the holes were formed in, not punched
out, so no meat was lost from your burger. In reality, the holes are
to prevent the steam pressure from shooting the burgers off the grill
and sticking them to the ceiling. Now, one can argue muchly in favor
of the kind of steamed hamburger that is a Connecticut regional
specialty; White Castle burgers aren't even remotely close to those.
Think of a two-inch-square hamburger bun with a sort of smear of
pastelike industrial-food-service meatloaf mix, grey and slightly
gritty, maybe an eighth of an inch thick, with little bits of dubious
diced onion guaranteed to send most people for extended bathroom
visits. You can also get them with cheese, and I guess they have a
little squirt of ketchup and perhaps a slice of pickle. They seem
usually, the ones I've seen (and that is more of them than I'd like
to admit) to be brushed or sprayed with a thin sheen of grease, to
make the whole thing shiny, and, in theory, attractive in some weird
way. Commonly known by New York teenagers (with mixed amusement,
contempt, and affection) as Belly Bombers.

Now, in fairness, I should say I think the White Castle Burger (as
representing perhaps the oldest of the big chains) is probably the
way it is for a reason, and that it has evolved from pre-Depression
proto-hamburgers just as the more typical fast-food hamburger has,
but just in a different direction. I remember, when I was a kid, that
there used to be several chains (and other businesses) that produced
a sort of slow-cooked hamburger, essentially, smothered in onions.
There was a Wetson's chain that did this, and the Papaya King (maybe
this is a solely New York thing) people produced this kind of burger
up until maybe five years ago, at which point they began to do
something a lot more like a regular, fast-food burger.

I think the WC (aptly named) burger has simply evolved in a different
direction from ancestors common also to the McDonald's type burger,
and it has a small but vocal group of supporters. Recent WC ads have
all suggested, essentially, that WC burger fans are few, these happy
few, members of an elite corps of rugged individualists who may have
odd tastes, but who aren't ashamed of them.

As far as the image of the huge platter of them goes, it should be
mentioned to non-initiates that a WC hamburger is quite small, and by
industrial standards, very cheap. For a long time they cost 12 cents,
and they may not be much more than (or even as much as) 50 cents,
even now. High school and college students, often having spent most
of their money on beer, still had a dollar or two left to buy a bag
containing maybe a dozen WC burgers, for their own personal
consumption. Your friends would get similar bags, I guess, or they
could co-invest in sacks of them containing as many as about 30
burgers. The ensuing gaseous (and other) eruptions from both ends of
the body (often simultaneous) are apparently considered all part of
the experience. I wasn't kidding when I compared it all to balut.

I could go on, because I find this phenomenon really interesting, and
hadn't intended to just lambaste the things. But I think I've made my
point... ;-)

Adamantius



>
>"Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius" wrote:
>>
>>  Even more OOP/OT: has anyone seen the absolutely horrible (of course,
>>  that is its intended appeal) White Castle television ad, with the
>>  Rockwell-esque family slavering over Grandma's big covered roast
>>  platter, which turns out to be full of hundreds of Little Square
>>  Hamburgers (tm)? Some day, archaeologists of the future, or alien
>>  scientists trying to piece together the fragments of our culture,
>>  will find this and scratch their heads in total confusion...
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