It's located in Columbia, Missouri -- the home of the University of Missouri -- and it just opened about a month ago. On Saturday night, I had an opportunity to drop in for the first time as I returned to Kansas City from a weekend roadtrip. Several observations:First, I have to say this is probably the nicest White Castle facility into which I've ever had the privilege to roll in person. The typical White Castle, in my experience, tends to be a bit of dive for lack of a better word -- you don't go to White Castle for the atmosphere, after all. But the Columbia joint is brand new. Give it some time, and it'll start to feel like a real White Castle.
Second, I was very impressed with the food service at this new White Castle. The kitchen was well-staffed with plenty of numbers, and it showed. Rarely having a chance to visit White Castle (since the chain skipped KC years ago), I took full advantage of this opportunity, running up a $34 tab by ordering a Crave Case (30 sliders in a cardboard brief case) with cheese, a sack of fish bites with tartar sauce, and a sack of onion rings.
Because I had a fairly large order, I had the decency to go into the restaurant to place my order rather than tying up the drive-thru line (hint hint to dumbass drive-thru tier-uppers everywhere). To my amazement, they had my order up in less than 10 minutes!
The White Castle lady even apologized to me for my wait. I responded by telling her that in fact, I was very impressed by how fast they were able to put it together. And this was during the heart of dinner time (six o'clock hour) on a Saturday night, with a full drive-thru line of several cars outside. I took my food, set aside a few sliders for the drive back to KC, and then stuck the rest of it in a cooler for preservation and later consumption.
The Aftermath: By now having devoured almost all of that food between last night and today (I have a few sliders left and that's it), it strikes me that White Castle should come up with an even bigger and more substantial menu item than the mere 30-count and aforementioned Crave Case -- especially for us White Castle fanatics who don't live near White Castles and therefore have to load up on our orders and try to freeze some of it at home. Here's the suggestion that I've come up with today:
A White Castle Crave Pallet! It would be served on an imitation cardboard forklift pallet and would consist of the equivalent of 16 Crave Cases -- 480 Sliders in all -- retailing at $275 (cheese extra). If they come up with something like this, I'm definitely there, dude!
And I even have a suggestion for an opening promotion to accompany the Crave Pallet: Put the word out on the street that if you and 9 of your buddies can come in and devour an entire Pallet in one sitting, then the Pallet's free!!! (Trust me, White Castle brass, there would be very few groups of 10 mortal men who could consume almost 500 Sliders between them in a single sitting -- heck, it would very hard for any group of 15 men to accomplish such a task).
Now, I'm not predicting we're going to see anything like the Crave Pallet anytime soon. I'd rather just see a White Castle in the Kansas City metro area for starters. But I can dream, can't I?
Posts
