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White Castle: Adventures in Food Safety

Every Canadian knows of a wonderful, magical place that can cure all your ills, and fill you in a way no other fast food restaurant can or wants to. It is a place worthy of an epic journey, a la Harold & Kumar.

“It” is White Castle.

Last month, I had the good fortune of spending a few days in beautiful Northern Kentucky, famously (mis)marketed as the South Side of Cincinnati (The mis-marketing is a topic for another time and place. Let’s leave it at: I’d never be happy living someplace that built its identity in relation to a bigger, better place. I know, I know, Canada… but here we are). It is also home to a vast array of liquor and tobacco shops, a “main strasse” (I don’t know why they pulled out the German there) and a White Castle. Normally, White Castle wouldn’t even register, but after an hour fifteen waiting for the hotel shuttle to pick me up at Nothern Kentucky’s Greater Cincinnati International Airport (or whatever order those words go in), I was starving, and only willing to look at restaurants within a block of my hotel. So I made the epic (block long) trek to Covington’s White Castle.

I’ll tell you what: never have my sense of both food AND physical safety been so violated before 11pm. I walk in, and for a few minutes, could only stare. Back in the kitchen (fully open), I see a woman lay out maybe a hundred of White Castle’s trademarked bite-size burgers, or ‘Slyders’, on the grill, and, while still completely red, put buns over top the raw meat to warm. Once the meat turns an unnatural shade of grey, she throws them together with some cheese and onion to form a ‘burger’. I’m tempted to walk away and head to the (in my opinion) much safer McDonald’s.

But I don’t. I persevere. I was later told not to knock White Castle, that it was an experience I could only really understand if I spent a good deal of time in Louisville or some other equally unlikely southern city, but I’m going to keep on relating my experience, as an uninitiated Canadian who has spent probably a month and a half of my life, all told, south of the Mason Dixon line.

I step up to the kind, scary, brutish lady at the counter and place my order. Four cheeseburgers, an order of fries, and a diet Coke. Four cheeseburgers, you say? No I’m not some kind of gargantuan superhuman eating machine–they’re tiny and that’s the standard combo. The woman doesn’t understand my thick East Coast (Canadian, not Boston) accent. I look to my right for guidance from the sleeping homeless man. He was asleep. And smelly to boot. I repeat myself. This time, it’s my turn to be confused. After a few tries, she asks if I’d like to donate to their Junior Achievement. I figure - anything to save the youth of Northern Kentucky, the South Side of Cincinnati, from having to work a day at White Castle, so I chip in two dollars and get my receipt (yes, I expensed this sad meal, and not to TunaCupcake.com)

My food arrives.

I sit, take a few pictures, and prepare to savour. Oh wait, while I’m taking pictures (and getting ‘who the hell is this retard tourist and why is he out after dark in such a dodgy area’ stares), I’m distracted by a small child whose mother is letting her eat fries (not hers) off the floor. And then gets free food, as she seems to be an off-duty employee… who is bringing in her three year old to eat at like 9:30pm. Awesome. Also the smelly sleeping man wakes up, swears, and leaves just as a police officer walks in. This really is a trip for the history books.

But how is the food, you ask?

Well, thinking back (it has been two weeks–but don’t worry, I did jot down some notes), I can still taste the fear. The fear that I was likely going to end up spending a good portion of the night over the toilet. No part of the burgers felt or tasted safe. The cooking process, over a bed of onions, under a bed of buns, is just very, very circumspect. And the whole place was pretty dirty. But I ate them, grey and mushy as they were. On the vaguely defined scale of BK to Wendy’s, I wouldn’t ban them as I have the Burger Kings and Taco Bells in my life (thats saying something about Taco Bell–thank you, Savannah, GA and your gross, gross Taco Bell), but they’re no McDonald’s cheeseburger. And definitely no Wendy’s Jr cheeseburger deluxe (though I’m actually not sure that would rate higher than a McD’s cheeseburger if you threw on some mayo at McD’s. Don’t you shush me, it’s my body. And I’ve never actually done it.) The fries were pretty much standard dairy bar fare. Crinkly, which I appreciate, crisp, but desperately frigid. They were practically crying for a blanket to keep warm. So overall, disappointing.

Now, let’s be clear: everyone knows that you go to White Castle after a long night of drinking or… other stuff. The only long part of my night was dealing with the hotel shuttle and the lovely smokey air at CVG. So I probably wasn’t in the right mood. But nonetheless, if only for the entertainment value and slight thrill I got (and the fact that I did NOT get sick!!), I’ll give this visit to White Castle 2/5th of a pickle.

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