Look, Midwesterners. Let me speak as one who lives among you and knows your sometimes incomprehensible ways. The rest of us know you love your White Castle, and, really, we’re content to let you have it. But the very second you claim that those vile, dwarfish patties of indeterminate origin are good by any other definition than the “this is something my intestines won’t quite reject,” or, possibly, the “we’re doing our part to clean up Mother Earth by recycling all those dead possums you find on rural highways” sense of the word, you lose. White Castle is as far from being a good burger as it is culinarily possible to be, a sort of anti-burger, if you will, that if it were to ever meet a real burger, would annihilate itself, not in a physical “anti-matter meeting matter” sense, but out of pure and simple shame. Claiming a White Castle slider represents a good burger is like pointing to mole rat and saying it’s an excellent example of a giraffe. You’re just so wildly wrong that all the rest of us can do is stare, agog, at the wonder of people who are actually capable of confusing the two.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad Chuck in Chicago enjoys his White Castle. I just feel sorry for him that those insidious little squares of minced rodent and sawdust have so disfigured his tastebuds, so crushed and denatured them and inured them to a life of deprivation, that when they were confronted with an actual burger, a superior burger, his brain simply couldn’t decipher their joy. It’s like the burger equivalent of the Stockholm Syndrome. You can’t argue with that. You can just try to understand.
In any event. Midwesterners, it’s okay if you like White Castle. Just don’t expect any of the rest of us to go along with the theory that they’re actual hamburgers. And for God’s sake don’t suggest to us that they’re better than other hamburgers. You’ll never recover your credibility, not just on matters of food but indeed on any other subject which requires critical evaluation. Because someone who is that wrong on something that obvious is simply not to be trusted. Pitied, yes. Trusted, no.