Why So Many People Can't Stand White Castle

White Castle, founded in Wichita, Kansas in 1921, bears a certain je ne sais quoi next to our Burger Kings and Mickie D's. History buffs will be impressed by its lore as the first fast food burger chain to technically reign over America, but it's also a place people humbly love. The chain leans into its reputation as a seedy, late-night haunt, and thanks to a fan base that gobbles up its sliders by the billions (nearly 30 billion that is, as of 2023), it's done proudly with a wink and a nudge. Given the stately medieval branding, the mini-burgers sold by the sack, and a silver-screen tribute now a comedy classic, it's not surprising people harbor a rosy affection.   

Although the company's put in over 100 years recruiting spellbound clientele, we can also safely say the magic hasn't washed over everyone. To those outside the perimeters of the castle's domain, the popularity can often feel puzzling for what's essentially grease-riddled bites packed in cardboard. Some credit White Castle with serving the worst burgers, period. You might think this regional-ish establishment is beloved by the masses, but unwrapping the myriad criticisms — the smelly aroma, the snail-paced crawl to the carryout window — shakes off the idea that it's universally adored in any way. So many people just can't stand White Castle we've found — and the feature below will tell you why. 

If you're already into American cuisine, there's nothing about a classic hamburger that should elicit alarm. But White Castle's burgers, as we'll touch on throughout, sort of defy the commonly associated traits that make this beef sandwich what it is. Allow the buns to prove our point. Sure, the slider rolls have a springy fluffiness, and the company even goes to the trouble of leasing out bakeries to supply the stock for its 300+ chateaus spanning the country. Unfortunately, the buns have earned a bad rap, and this is because, per the complaints, the texture suffers a tendency of going soggy. 

As it stands, we can assign blame to White Castle's cooking procedures for provoking rage in scores of visitors. The staff behind the counter don't grill the sliders as you'd expect for an average fast food chain. So, then, how do they cook the patties? With steam. While the meat and onions sizzle away together on the stovetop, cooks then pop open the buns and place them on top of the pile. Rather than each component cooking separately for assembly at the end, the little burger comes together entirely in one go. It's a convenient shortcut that infuses a recognizably savory, flavor, and works to soften the beef patties to a cushion-y consistency. The downside though, like all steamed cheeseburgers, is the bread roll may be mushy and borderline disintegrated by the time it's boxed up and delivered to the takeout window. 

Onions are a beloved garnish most burger purists can't resist. On the other hand, the umami kick they contribute can be too much, which makes all the vocal opposition to White Castle's food make sense. According to critics, the problem is that White Castle does not treat onions as a simple complement to enhance its bite-sized specialties. The vegetable is downright inescapable, bleeding straight through the plush bun and flattened patty. On the Original Slider, the flagship product, you'll experience strands in just about every mouthful you can choke down. One consumer, recounting a prior trip to the castle on Reddit, was repulsed by the pungency of the toppings. "I don't like onions and my wife's were basically onion juice soaked rolls," they said.

Minus a single pickle that's rounded it out over the last century, the punchy umami tone is about the only flavor you detect in one of its mini burgers. And in a similar vein to the highly-detested bread buns, it's the culinary practices White Castle adheres to that seems largely responsible. The onions, you'll find, are seared on the grill-top in a massive layer; this is so when staff place the beef squares on top, the shredded morsels brown simultaneously with the meat. As a result, the burger is imparted with the tell-tale aroma of pure allium — an overpowering scent not everyone will find agreeable, clearly. 

Tiny as they are, White Castle's mini-burgers remain an outlier in the fast food world for a reason that's fairly stark: the lack of condiments. Look at the menu, and tell us if you see any sauces offered on the sandwiches — a relish-y mayonnaise perhaps, or good old-fashioned ketchup and mustard. Nope, we don't see any either. Minus the Bacon Ranch Chicken Slider that hit menus back in 2022, every slider essentially arrives undressed. To no surprise, this doesn't entice many customers who weren't already familiar with the company's plainer approach to burger-making. For example, YouTube video creator Jay Rule was bummed when testing out the Fish Slider, a handheld reeled in around 2020. "Something's not tasting right," he said in regards to the seafood morsel, and another bite later he goes on to add that the blandness is due to the sandwich missing tartar sauce. 

One could argue White Castle's slider formula (which started with beef, but has expanded towards chicken and fish) was engineered to require no condiment of any kind. To the chain's congregation of followers, the simplicity is what makes them so delicious. You would be ruining its essence by slathering on ketchup; the simplicity of onion, pickle, and beef, to them, is the holy trifecta that defines it. This philosophy potentially filtered into the rest of the offerings, which explains the slew of unsatisfied customers. 

Driving up to the gates of this royal drive-thru establishment, visitors are never quite prepared for the microscopic portions of meat-between-bun. Where a whole pound of beef can translate into multiple cheeseburgers elsewhere, White Castle can cash it in for 18 of them. They measure 2 ½ inches in length and width, making them a snap to wolf down one-by-one, which is good news if you happen to be named Harold or Kumar. However, less-enthused customers tend to feel cheated by the miniature sizing regardless. The dislike can usually be boiled down to a practical explanation, as one Reddit commenter offered: "To me the patty is way too thin for the amount of bread." 

People tend to be disappointed by White Castle's teeny, tiny patties because they're expecting a regular-sized hamburger. But the thing is, they're not like other establishments where you can invest your appetite into a single creation, like the Whopper or Dave's Single. They're sliders. The smaller dimensions not only mean you can eat more of them, but this was the purpose of the eatery's goal when it launched in the 1920s. Churning out as many hamburgers as the demand could feed upon was exactly where the mini-sized format took off. 

The relationship between a burger and slider can be compared to as close cousins: mingling in the same food family, but distinct enough to garner separate labels. Still, skeptics might not be willing to entertain that difference, finding it polarizing instead.  

When you aren't in the mood for french fries, takeout giants have gone on to figure out exciting add-ons to pair with your trusty hamburger. Ever hear of cheese curds or battered zucchini rounds? You have now. White Castle's selection of crinkle-cut fries, mozzarella sticks, onion rings, and "chicken rings" (which are essentially disc-shaped chicken nuggets) seem decent enough, but ask around the web and you'll discover a good number of people find them weak. 

Online, Franchise Chatter and YouTuber Lukefoods were united by their disdain for the french fries, finding the execution unmemorable, unseasoned, and barely crispy — the bare minimum for a french fry. Another YouTube creator, KingSchratz, held correlating opinions on the Hash Brown Nibblers, a morning item. "This just tastes like a potato," he exclaimed, concluding that the blah-ness made them a let-down that other renditions on the market could beat. 

Is this how everyone feels about White Castle's food? Obviously not. Nevertheless, the grievances do contain some truth if we were to only look at the ingredient information made available on the chain's website. There's zero indication that the fries and hash browns sport a vibrant seasoning blend; raw potato and vegetable oil comprise the first few ingredients, followed by preservatives. No wonder they leave people yawning (or running). 

Maybe sliders don't cost a nickel like they did in the Roaring Twenties, yet one thing's for sure, White Castle's crowning achievement remains consistently friendly on the bank account. Among the 345 drive-thrus operating throughout the heartland and beyond, one burger will cost about 72 cents — still below the going rate of a normal discount cheeseburger. And by packing these petite snacks in paper sacks or cardboard suitcases (handle included), the chain feeds the notion that you're somehow scoring a stupendous deal on your order. 

Truth is, plenty of folks think the opposite. The sheer volume of food creates the illusion that you're getting away with highway robbery, especially when the price point is unbelievably affordable. Consumers whose taste buds haven't been colored by bias, however, claim the food doesn't add up to be worth the money, at least for what you get. Those who only visit the drive-thru to optimize their hard-earned cash might opt for combos, not à la carte. And even then, it's not clear that you're saving much more money than if you had swung by a different establishment for a conventional handheld. In the case of a low Yelp rating, a full-course order ended up costing $8 and was apparently "smaller than a McDonald's Happy Meal." The gluttonous fantasy of diving mouth first into greasy, bite-sized buns on the cheap is something we expect the brand banks on. And unfortunately, visitors aren't buying it. 

White Castle churns out large quantities of food. The chain's chief operating officer Jeff Carper claims, per Nation's Restaurant News, that a single location can typically sling about 1,800 sliders every hour — a maximum count that likely fluctuates given the foot traffic. Despite doling out these orders at a frequency rivaling the Boston Marathon, however, some patrons refuse to put up with White Castle's longer-than-average wait time. "Usually it's only 15-20 minutes, but I've seen it take 2 hours before," revealed a Redditor over on /AskAnAmerican, calling it the "slowest fast food place in existence." 

If you look at how the kitchens operate, you might understand why the fast food chain, ironically, isn't super fast. For one, crew members are actually assembling the sliders fresh, from start to finish. They aren't nuking them in the microwave, nor are they snatching them off a heater which they'd bag up for the guest. Munchie jokes aside, scratch-cooking is taken extremely seriously by the chain, to the point that if batches of burgers aren't claimed in half an hour or less, they'll be disposed of. 

Any drive-thru in the year 2024 would be celebrated for taking a slower, manual approach. But diners aren't looking to fritter away their lunch hour held up in line, and we can hardly blame them in axing the chain from their routine. 

When a restaurant meal doesn't "sit right," it can definitely deter you from venturing back in the future. Food poisoning isn't the sole excuse though. Any kind of digestive trouble causing your stomach to gurgle and twist is a nightmare to endure. And for some diners, White Castle usually stands as the culprit of this agony. The bite-sized morsels tend to have a nasty habit of brewing up a storm in your bowels. "You are guaranteed to go to the bathroom after eating a few murderburgers," confirmed one unlucky Reddit user on r/NewJersey, with various responses demonstrating, in TMI fashion, the putrid consequences. 

Devouring heavy food is bound to upset the tummy, and that's regardless of the franchise — they don't call them "greasy spoons" for nothing, right? Though White Castle isn't unique on this front, an Ask Me Anything thread with an employee reveals how the chain exacerbates the problem thanks to its prized ingredient: steam. Basically, the steam draws out moisture from both the beef and the bun, and since the meat is high in fat, it inevitably will leak grease. This causes the juices to combine, and basically coats the whole slider in oil. Another theory for the gastrointestinal fury in your gut? The onions, since alliums harbor a sugar molecule linked to stomach troubles. 

So many people can't stand White Castle's food. And all that takes, for a few of the haters grimacing from the sidelines, is simply looking at it. We know, we know, it isn't fair to judge exclusively on looks. But how can you not judge when the beef is a bizarre hue and the buns practically expel grease just by holding it in your hands? "They're weird steamy, soggy, sad little burgers," a Reddit user declared in a thread on /AskAnAmerican, and detractors, at least the ones online, often refer to them by unflattering monikers ripping their lackluster appearance: "ratburgers," "roachburgers," and the vicious-sounding "murderburgers" which, as you can probably imagine, calls back to the tummy problems they unleash (we won't go into detail).

Frankly, location can be involved in the nasty-looking batches diners over the years have encountered. Though White Castle doesn't lease out franchises, it's just common knowledge that some outposts have crew who are better-equipped at making the food palatable. The transcendent gut-bombs acolytes rave about can cross over into "hamburger heart of darkness" for others very quickly if they happen to step into a storefront with spotty kitchen staff. Otherwise, it's simply different strokes. Even if you're committed to the white-and-blue palace, not everyone will enjoy sampling a bite of sopping bread glued to gray, mousey meat. 

Reaching the pick-up window to collect your parcel of steaming-hot food is one of the joys of drive-thru ordering: we think of it as the reward at the end of the finish line. Yet pulling over to discover your lunch, which took a lot longer to get than you anticipated, isn't even warm? That really grinds the gears, and seems to be a complaint aired by more customers than you'd think. "Have you tasted a White Castle fish sandwich cold?" a grossed out reviewer posed over on Yelp. "It tastes like what you'd think something from the bottom of an aquarium would taste like!"

True, White Castle is far from the sole offender hawking cold food — that would require putting every takeout spot on trial, and who has time for that? However, the problem occurs very, very persistently, and studying up on the company's "Food Safety Facts" online illuminates one particular possibility — the shunning of heat lamps. It's an open secret that White Castle doesn't artificially warm its wares. Short of maintaining a supply on the stove awaiting customer purchase, the burgers won't touch another heat source again — that is, until it's packed up and stewing in its own aromas. Maybe the burger will be "fresher," but lacking the burst of warmth essentially chills your takeout meal, if not the goodwill you could have for the chain. 

Something we think all junk food lovers can agree on? Patronizing White Castle is a love-it-or-hate-it experience. People, who from afar remain gob-smacked by the hype, might need to reckon with whether the royal-leaning chain was part of their lives to begin with. There are only 15 states in America where you can pull up to devour its oily delicacies in person, and most will be scattered throughout the Northeast and the Midwest. The fact is, White Castle is not a readily accessible establishment — it's regional. If you're not in a region where these eateries are abundant, acquiring a taste for it could be a struggle later on. 

Over at r/fastfood, one post titled "Why is White Castle such a big thing?" was met with discussion over the brand's style of cuisine, and reasoned one Reddit user, the draw lies in its unconventional quality.  "White Castle is very unique and I think it takes a certain person to appreciate them." With the kind of limited availability that inspires pilgrimages, fans of the chain are definitely going to take pride where they can. This also plays into another factor, which is nostalgia. As explained in one Yelp review, the fare is a little perplexing unless you enjoy an emotional attachment. "I think people who grew up on these have the sliders as a part of their memories, but for everyone else, it's quite bewitching."