Dive Dining in Detroit: White Castle and The Booby Trap

Scene from the Heidelberg Project

I had the surprising pleasure of spending three days in Detroit recently. I say surprising because, to be honest, I was not looking forward to it, but I came away longing for more time in the sorrowfully-beautiful city. Detroit has old-world sophistication and pockets of thriving culture nestled in cachets amongst the rubble wrought by a ravaged economy. It’s an old-soul kind of a city- every novel experience carries with it a sense of nostalgia for heady days gone by.

Scene from the Heidelberg Project

I spoke with dozens of locals about my highlights over the three days and I was struck by how many of them hadn’t heard of or hadn’t visited many of the places in which I found myself. One local summed it up best when he said “Detroit is the kind of city that you need to have a sense of adventure to appreciate. You could live your whole life here and miss most of the really remarkable things.” I dove into Detroit with typical Salty zeal; when I travel I don’t much care for sleep or spas. I like to do what the people do and pound the pavement from dawn til dawn.  I slather the marrow of the city I’m visiting into my every orifice then lick it off as I process the experience over the days that follow. Detroit has been a tricky one to lick clean- the marrow of that city coats to the quick.

Scene from the Heidelberg Project

My old friend Stephanie- top-notch tour guide and Detroit native- took me to White Castle, Lafayette Coney Island, The Booby Trap on my beloved 8 Mile, The Cadieux Café, Polonia Polish Restaurant, and the Urban Detroit Farmer’s Market. Between each place she pointed out landmarks such as Detroit’s abandoned train station (easily one of the top five most captivating examples of ruined architecture I have ever seen) and the Heidelberg Project (which is a found-object art installation spanning several city blocks in a nearly-abandoned area of Detroit).

Scene from the Heidelberg Project

Over the three days I ate like a trucker (and cursed like one too- even adopting a little twinge of that unmistakable Detroit drawl) and threw all caution to the Midwest bone-chilling wind when it came to the things I was willing to put in my body. After all, I had to give a full report- you lovelies deserve the best, so let’s just call those 30 White Castle burgers me “taking one for the team,” ok? Speaking of White Castle, I ate there twice. I have an incurable penchant for seedy burger joints and somehow am able to suspend my politico-religious morals and foodgirl cred in order to eat in them. 90% of the reason I ever get on a plane to California is for In N Out burger (always stilo animalo, ya dig?) and White Castle was a notch I hadn’t etched into my belt until Detroit.  Thank you Detroit, oh Paris of the West, for satisfying my fleshy carnal desires.

Scene from the Heidelberg Project

There is another reason I ate at White Castle twice, one I don’t want to admit because it isn’t nearly as cool as fessing up to the fact that I wanted to stuff my gob full of those tiny little individually-cartoned sliders of sauce-gasmic proportions. The first time I ate there I reached for my laptop bag containing my camera so I could sufficiently document the experience and realized I had left the bag at the car rental shop at the airport an hour away. Panic ensued and I hurtled back down the byway toward the airport in a Detroit-bred American GMC-but not before I ordered a little taste of what was to come, for I never neglect my pangs of famishment, notwithstanding emergencies. The laptop and DSLR were just fine- see- Detroit is as honest as these winter days are short!

Day two of White Castle proved more satisfying than day one by far. I ordered damn near everything on the menu, including such oddities as “chicken rings.” What, pray tell is a chicken ring? Let me enlighten you to a fact commonly understood by the underground illuminati of the fast food good ol’ boys club. If you fashion anything into the shape of a ring then fry it, it WILL taste better. Case in point, donuts, or the object most ubiquitous to making this point: the onion ring. White Castle clearly understands this deep within the underbelly of their walk-in refrigerators and so, the chicken ring takes flight! Literally too, since we tossed them like little frisbees to see if they were at all aerodynamic.  I mean, when you’re engineering mechanically-separated saline-enhanced chicken parts, the least you can do is make them aerodynamic, right? Verdict: chicken rings are gross, but funny when you tease your friend by likening them to certain other types of rings she might use on her husband’s you-know-what.

I ordered the classic sliders in several ways: single, double, with cheese, without, with sauce, and without and finally, with bacon. I ordered just about every other non-hamburger-based slider on the menu as well, from the pulled pork to the chicken supreme to the fish sandwich.  One surprising (and thoroughly scientific) discovery I made was that bacon does not in fact make EVERYTHING better (the horror!), just most things. Perhaps White Castle gets their bacon from really anemic pork bellies, or something, but the bacon-added slider did nothing but dry out the sloppy succulence of the perfect, miniature meat patty. In terms of the hamburger-esque sliders, the single with cheese and sauce was my favorite. The rest of the sliders were largely forgettable with the exception of the pulled pork, which was much better than I had anticipated.

The fries are little kid crinkle-cut-style and really took me back- back to 3^rd grade, that is, and the Sawtooth Elementary School Cafeteria. Good when hot, but you might as well be eating day-old smegma once they cool even a millisecond. The fish sandwich is something I would pay $100 NOT to have to eat ever again. I’m not certain what bottom-dwelling white fish they use to compose the clammy patty, but it smelled more like the girls locker room after a heated asparagus-eating match than anything reminiscent of actual fish. I think I was wise to stay away from the clam strips too, don’t you?

I realize this is sounding more and more like a non-satisfying experience and that is not the point I wish to convey at all. Here’s the thing- when you go to White Castle you’d do well to stick to the true beefy slider menu, you’d do fine to order a double, and you’d be happy with the cheese and sauce. Washing it all down with a chocolate shake is also a damn fine idea. Don’t think you can’t swiftly knock back ten of these puppies either- if I have room, so do you. My only major source of contention with White Castle is the prolific packaging. Each two-inch slider comes in a dura-built little carrying case that’s frickin’ nice enough to hold a wedding ring (well, if you’re inbred and live in a sawed-in-half doublewide). Considering that most people order 5-10 sliders, that’s a lot of waste. And Detroit didn’t seem to up on the whole recycling movement, either. I did not see a single recycle bin throughout my visit. So yes, White Castle, you know the secret to a good fast food slider, and yes, I’d enter you bi-annually if you moved west of the Rockies, but you’d do well to clean up your act a lil bit.

Tales from Detroit will resume in part two of this post, but I wanted to quickly leave you with this image imprinted on your frontal lobe. The scene of the crime: a “gentlemen’s” club called “The Booby Trap” on 8 Mile- the famed Detroit street that Eminem portrayed in said movie of same name starring himself and the late Britney Murphy. The subject: yours truly, bursting with verklempt excitement over having her picture taken in such an illustrious location. Come back next time if you care to see just how many Coney Dogs and “Loose Hamburgers” I was able to cram between my lips, plus, Featherbowling 101- defined and delivered!

On Eight Mile at The Booby Trap