"It's like the White Castle people were like, fuck nature. Make the chicken into fucking rings."

[Amerigo Vespucci]

White Castle: A history of culinary violence
Why their burgers are called sliders and ... what the hell are Chicken Rings? I find out, and much more
By Francis Lam



This might be a sign that my life has taken a wrong turn, but this appeared in my e-mail: "I hear you're doing a recurring column about eating nasty shit. You should eat the chicken rings they've got at White Castle. They come in ranch flavor." So this is what my work has become? Clowning for you? Eating garbage for your amusement? OK, fine. Mmm ... ranch flavor.

But what the hell is a Chicken Ring? Even the McNugget, that apotheosis of food facsimile, is stamped out of its processed chicken-amalgam paste to resemble "random" cuts of chicken; it tries to look like a food that may exist in nature (if nature had a deep fryer). But rings? It's like the White Castle people were like, "You know what? Fuck nature. Fuck it. Make the chicken into fucking rings."

I have to tell you that on more than one occasion, I have defended White Castle -- mostly because of the egregious trend of calling any small sandwich a "slider." They're everywhere, from high-end restaurants to trendy lounges to dive bars. I call bullshit. The sandwich called the slider comes from White Castle, period. It's called that because the tiny burgers they serve are cooked on top of onions, so it's actually the greasy, oniony steam that cooks them through and seeps into the buns, making them exceptionally -- shall we say -- moist, though many observers may prefer the word "sleazy." They're called sliders because they're so, er, moist that they slide down your throat. So I feel strongly that you don't get to call your fancified little sandwich a "slider" just because it's cute. You have to earn that kind of name.

Chicken Ring bite 1: For a second, I can see why someone would confuse this with food. It has a little bit of crunch, a little bit of meaty chew, a little bit of juiciness, and a little bit of fried flavor.

Chicken Ring bite 2: I start to see where the whole "this is food" thing falls apart. The meaty chew is weirdly ... bouncy. The juiciness is more like a semblance of juiciness, in that it feels like moist meat, but there is actually no visible juice in the strangely crisscrossed fibers of the "chicken." And at the end, there's a very weird, chemical kind of bitterness, a taste that throws the reality of what I'm chewing to the fore: This is a lab-created facsimile of food. It's like the talking sex doll of food. But it's not real food. Maybe this is the petri-dish chicken-meat PETA's been agitating for?

http://www.salon.com/food/francis_lam/2010/06/18/white_castle_chicken_rings/index.html

[MiddleFingerMom]

1. FUNNY blog!! I used to LOVE White Castle burgers...

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...be it 4 PM sober or 3 AM shitfaced.
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Least I used to. None here in Tucson and, although tempted
to buy a box of frozen sliders in my local supermarket --
I think the experience would be TERRIBLY disappointing...
so I'm not subjecting myself to it.
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They were FIVE-FOR-A-FREAKING-BUCK in the late 70's.
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