Your daily 6: Happy St. Paddy’s Day; QAnon Shaman video angers judge; White Castle turns 100

An early White Castle restaurant. White Castle restaurants, which began in 1921, are only located in 14 states — a 15th, Florida, will be added soon.

Photo courtesy of White Castle

Dale Bemis of Oaklawn, Illinois, used to get White Castle hamburgers with extra pickles with his father whenever they went fishing. It was such a part of their life together that his dying father came out of a coma he asked for one last sack of burgers with extra pickles.

Some years later, Bemis took his then-girlfriend to White Castle. Without prompting, she ordered three burgers with extra pickles, and he knew she was the right one for him. They are now married.

White Castle turned 100 years old last week. In 1921, real estate agent and insurance salesman Billy Ingram met Walt Anderson, a cook who owned three hamburger stands in Wichita, Kansas. With $700 between them, they opened what became a chain of restaurants selling small hamburgers for a nickel.

They chose the name White because it stressed cleanliness (food preparation wasn’t always sanitary at the time), and Castle for its implication of permanence and strength.

“For Billy, it was really important for the food to be hot, tasty and affordable,” said vice president Jamie Richardson from the corporate offices in Columbus, Ohio.

The company is still family-owned and managed; CEO Lisa Ingram is Billy Ingram’s great-granddaughter. It runs 362 restaurants in 14 states, primarily in the Midwest and Northeast.

St. Louis has been part of the White Castle story since 1925. It was the fourth city to be included in the chain and, because the company is no longer in the previous three cities, St. Louis has had White Castle restaurants longer than any other place in the country.

White Castle was already a part of the St. Louis landscape for two years when Ingram came up with a revolutionary concept that changed restaurants forever.

“In 1927, Billy had the wild idea that people might want to come to the restaurant and take the food home to eat. As far as we know, that was the invention of carry-out,” Richardson said.

White Castle burgers are one of those things that you either love or you hate. Critics complain about mushy, waterlogged buns and an overwhelming taste of onion. Those very features are what bring fans back for more.

The unique flavor and texture come from the chain’s cooking process, which it calls steam grilling. The cooks first put a ladle of onions on a hot griddle, which creates steam from the moisture in the onions. An all-beef burger goes on top of the onions, and half of a bun on top of that.

“With those five holes in the burger, the steam melds all of those flavors,” Richard said.

Each square patty, which weighs less than an ounce before cooking, has five holes in it. The holes were not always there. According to Richardson, an employee made a suggestion in the employee suggestion box to add the holes — while keeping the same amount of meat — in order to cook the burgers faster and cut down on the waiting lines.

The same suggestion box yielded a story of failure that turned into success.

Everybody loves pizza. Two separate employees suggested that the chain cash in on the pizza craze by serving large orders of hamburgers in a box that is shaped like a pizza box. Excited by the prospect, the company came up with a box — “great design,” Richardson said — and five restaurants in the Chicago area agreed to test market it.

“Four hours into the test, the phone started ringing. The box didn’t fit through the window at drive-thru,” Richardson said.

But the idea of serving many burgers at a time in a cardboard box caught hold. Now the Crave Case, a briefcase-shaped box that holds 30 hamburgers, is a popular menu item at the restaurants.

Although White Castle restaurants are only located in 14 states — a 15th, Florida, will be added soon — White Castle hamburgers and cheeseburgers are now available in the freezer aisle of grocery stores all across America. These grocery-store sales make up the company’s largest area of growth, Richardson said.

But they just don’t taste like the real thing.

Richardson has a ready remedy. He said to let the burgers thaw in the refrigerator before heating, put them in the microwave for 30 seconds and then add a slice of pickle. The frozen burgers don’t come with them because pickles burn in a microwave.

The pickle can change your life. Just ask Dale Bemis. — DAN NEMAN, St. Louis Post-Dispatch