Before anyone ever heard of Harold, much less Kumar, before the invention of the Crave campaign, before the word Slyder was trademarked I was a teenage White Castle worker. On this last day of National Hamburger Month I'd like to share my memories of working at America's oldest hamburger chain, as well as my thoughts on its present state of affairs.I started working at White Castle during my senior year in high school. I'd eaten their burgers with my folks as a kid and had enjoyed their "restorative" effects after drinking with my buddies. We used to call the tasty little suckers "White Crapples." When one opened in my neighborhood, I figured what the hell, and applied for a job. After management determined I had a pulse and some level of manual dexterity, however minimal, I was hired.
Back then the uniform was slightly different than it is today. I remember wearing a brown shirt and a baseball cap. All burger cooking was done in clear view. To the left of the register, customers watched their square patties being steam-grilled. I still remember the time a Little League team ordered 100 burgers. Instead of letting the line back up, we opened another station and got to work.
Once after blowing a joint with my co-worker Max, the burgers on my flat top started burning. As I stared into space, he sounded the alarm by screaming, "Bang your head" at me. He averted disaster by ladling onion water onto my griddle. Back then there was no shortage of onion water, since we used dehydrated onions. Small dust clouds would form as we poured dried diced onion into stainless buckets before adding water.
But it wasn't all burnt grills and onion dust. One of the perks was eating sliders during our breaks. To mix things up, I'd invent off-menu items: double cheeseburgers with the middle bun removed, double fish, fish and chicken, triples and so on. After years of topping my burgers with onion rings such improvisation was the next logical step.
These days I eat White Castle maybe three or four times a year usually in the middle of the night after more than a few too many beers. I do sometimes crave them when I'm in a more lucid state of mind. My go-to ticket is two burgers, a double cheeseburger and an order of onion rings.
The other day I paid my first visit to the Castle in a long time. For some reason Church's Chicken flags fluttered above the turrets. I'm sure it's not bad, but I could'nt bring myself to order fried chicken in White Castle. Instead I got two burgers, a cheeseburger, a bacon double cheeseburger, a jalapeño double cheeseburger, a surf and turf with cheese and the obligatory order of onion rings.
In case you're wondering this gut-wrenching order was made at 2 p.m., not after a night of partying. The classic White Castles hit the spot. Next up was the tasty bacon double cheeseburger topped with a thin circular slice of bacon that looked liked it came out of a fast-food salumeria. By now I was starting to max out and took only a small bite of the not unpleasant jalapeño double cheeseburger. I was saving myself for what I consider to be the Castle's strangest offering, the surf and turf with cheese (pictured). Sadly the ingredients were not short ribs, soft shell crab and manchego. The combination of fried fish, beef and cheese is one that I won't be trying again for some time.
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