If White Castle went away, would anyone notice?
I drive by a fair number of White Castle restaurants each week. Without a doubt these are the most drab, boring and unappealing fast food restaurants out there. If I have a chance I'll take some pictures. But really, I'm not going out of my way.
So the first two sentences and the title naturally lead to a question. If these places are so dull, why do I keep noticing them? Not recently, but often in the now distant past (at least 7 years ago) I ate a fair number of sliders. When the movie White Castle came out I strongly identified with it from a food relationship. The interesting thing about it is that I have never set foot in a White Castle establishment. I've been through the drive through a few times and I suppose there is an outside chance I went into one but the number of times I've purchased food there is less than 5. The reason I ate sliders was they were sold in the grocery store, frozen. The packaging was clean and the sandwiches appealing. I ate a lot.
I'm not really here to critique the food, but suffice it to say there's also a reason I don't eat them anymore. And to be fair, I stopped eating them long before I gave up most forms of gluten last June.
So back to the restaurants. If the food isn't great and the places of business are dull and boring would anyone really notice if they went away? Take a long, hard look at the next White Castle restaurant you drive or walk by. It's got small windows, leaving a largely uninviting, gray and shabby exterior. To be true, they may have started white but at least in the city of Chicago there's a lot of drab gray on their outsides.
To contrast the White Castle experience, I went by both a Taco Bell and a White Castle while leaving Midway Airport a few days ago. Whether you like Taco Bell's food or not, they at least give you a visually stunning appearance when you look at the building (the one on Cicero near Midway anyway). There were large windows, small wisps of neon color on the facade, a fresh looking building and everything that the White Castles aren't. I'll leave the quality of the food debate at Taco Bell for another day.
I don't know if the White Castle restaurants will disappear in the near term, but if they do, I for one will not be surprised.