I don’t know what I expected when I bought a package of frozen White Castle hamburgers at the local Ralph’s, but it certainly wasn’t for them to be any good, let alone edible. Yet when I microwaved these bitches up for lunch I found them to be… quite tasty. And they really tasted like fresh White Castle tastes.
When I was living in New York I didn’t go to White Castle very often at all. It was always a special occasion – me and a bunch of friends and like 40 hamburgers (if you’ve never had a White Castle, they’re small. The motto is ‘Eat Em By the Sack’). I don’t think I had a White Castle for a year before I left; stopping by the place on Atlantic Avenue was always one of those ‘Things I Should Do Before I Move’ ideas, but one I never acted on.
Seeing that box in the frozen food aisle of the Ralph’s really made me miss them, though (also reawakened: a taste for Yoo Hoo, which is available in California but sort of rare). There are no White Castles out this way (although just a few blocks away is some phoney White Castle with a very similar signage – bastards!), and while I could go a year or more without having the burgers when they were available, having no access to fresh White Castle has proven to be a psychological stumbling block.
So I bought this box and it sat in the freezer for a week and today I finally tossed the Sliders in the microwave. Shockingly, they came out tasting almost exactly like freshly steamed burgers do, which might be a telling indictment of the quality of fresh White Castle. I had expected something that tasted like shit and was half soggy, but the burgers held up and I was suddenly transported to a filthy restaurant in Brooklyn where drug deals were happening in the open. It was like being home again, if just for the span of four hamburgers.