Of all the culinary guilty pleasures that Americans enjoy, sliders are probably near the top of many lists. These mini burgers are served on an equally undersized bun, garnished with little more than pickles and grilled onions (and maybe mustard), and often consumed after sunset when gluttonous pursuits are better obscured under the cover of darkness.
Indeed, sliders are commonly served in restaurants that aren’t necessarily where you were going, but instead where you ended up, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
In fact, the titular inventors of the slider at White Castle have recently leaned into the chain’s reputation as a late-night dining destination by cheekily rebranding the restaurant as “Night Castle” and sharing data that 83% of diners like to eat fast food at the end of a night out. Almost 70% of White Castle locations are open 24/7, while many of the remaining restaurants stay open past midnight on weeknights and around the clock on weekends.
Sliders are usually a volume purchase, often by the sackful or in larger quantities, ranging to White Castle’s 100-slider “Crave Crate.” So we know when you like them, and how much you like them, but the question is why you like them. The reasons are many from the ease of purchasing in bulk, the fact that nobody really keeps count of your consumption after you’ve downed a couple, and the consistent flavor memory of the tangy burgers that might remind you of the debaucherous fun you had right before the last time you stopped for a 10-bagger.
Now larger restaurant chains, including Chili’s and the Cheesecake Factory, have jumped on the slider bandwagon. T.G.I. Friday’s sells its signature sliders in the freezer case of your local supermarket (albeit curiously not currently in its restaurants). Other national chains have dabbled with adding sliders to their menus as specialty or limited-time offerings, including A&W, Sonic, Johnny Rockets, Applebee’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Ruby Tuesday, and Red Robin, although none of them are offering sliders as a regular item at the moment.
Personally, this is a good thing, because I recently accepted the challenge to try the sliders everywhere within driving distance of my home of Nashville, Tenn., and my gastroenterologist is grateful that I was limited to four options: two long-time slider emporia and two popular casual-dining chains better known for their full-size burgers plus other specialties. Follow along on my slider sojourn, as I rank them from my least favorite to the overall best.
White Castle
Nutrition:
The Original Slider (Per Order)
Calories: 140
Fat: 7 g (Saturated Fat: 2.5 g)
Sodium: 380 mg
Carbs: 16 g (Fiber: 1 g, Sugar: 2 g)
Protein: 6 g
While you can no longer purchase a White Castle slider for a nickel like when the chain was founded back in 1921, it’s still pretty easy to enjoy a meal at White Castle with the change you scrounged from your sofa cushions or glove compartment. At my local Castillo Blanco, a regular slider still retails for under a dollar, a price point begging you to order more than you intended upon entering the small restaurant. Although the company is embracing its status as a late-night hang, my local had a prominent sign hanging in the dining room advising of a “30-minute time limit while consuming food” and warning, “No loitering.” That’s OK, I got mine to go. A ordered three sliders, just 96 cents each.
The look: Not much has changed about the White Castle slider in over a century. It’s still a square bun, about half the size of a deck of cards, with a thin patty of gray ground beef, sautéed onions, and a pickle. The patty is cooked alongside the onions on an appropriately greasy flat top grill. Later, the bun is finished by steaming it atop the burger on the same grill.
The taste: The slim patty was briny and infused with flavor from the nicely seasoned onions, while the sharp pickle offered a little acid to cut through the delicious fat. The steamed bun added a nice extra layer of flavor while still making sure that every element of the slider was apparent as a discrete flavor and texture.
Is it gourmet? Heck, no! Is it what you want or need to soak up a little of the evening’s prior sins? Absolutely! Even so, you can do better elsewhere.
The Cheesecake Factory
Nutrition:
Roadhouse Sliders (Per Order)
Calories: 800
Fat: 35 g (Saturated Fat: 13 g, Trans Fat: 2 g)
Sodium: 1,720 mg
Carbs: 70 g (Fiber: 1 g, Sugar: 18 g)
Protein: 48 g
Hidden within a menu that is packed as densely as “Finnegan’s Wake” with an international array of food options, you’ll find the Cheesecake Factory’s Roadside Sliders, which are truly worth skipping over the first 300 other possibilities to get to. Sliders in name and size only, they come four to an order and are basically just really good burgers miniaturized. This order cost me $13.95.
The look: Appropriately bite-sized and served on small brioche-style buns shining with butter glaze, the Roadside Sliders look like something worth savoring, not something to be rushed through like trying to get out of Krystal before curfew begins and the cops start coming in for free coffee and to bust teenagers.
The taste: The rich beef patty was a nice loose grind, cooked to a light pink and adorned with a tangy barbecue sauce and smoke-kissed grilled onions. Vegetable toppings are served on the side, reminiscent of McDonald’s short-lived 1980s experiment, the McDLT, memorably designed to keep “the hot side hot and the cold side cold.” Diners can choose how much, if any, shredded lettuce and sharp dill pickles they want to add to their individual mini burgers at the Cheesecake Factory, which is a nice touch.
But adding lettuce to your slider is, literally, not even an option at the OGs of White Castle and Krystal. That’s another reason that, while the Cheesecake Factory makes a pretty fine burger, you shouldn’t really call it a slider!
Krystal
Nutrition:
Original Krystal (Per Serving)
Calories: 150
Fat: 7 g (Saturated Fat: 2.5 g)
Sodium: 330 mg
Carbs: 14 g (Fiber: 1 g, Sugar: 1 g)
Protein: 7 g
White Castle may be more venerable, but in the South where I live, Krystal is king! (Although most people add an extra “s” to the chain”s name like they do in “Kroger’s,” “Nordstrom’s,” and “Aldi’s.” Somehow, this makes more sense that Krystal be referred to in the plural, because who the heck is ever going to eat just one slider?)
The company’s advertising slogan of “Krystal Kravings” is a legitimate description of what drives most guests to the restaurant’s door and has since the Chattanooga, Tenn.-based fast-food behemoth was founded in 1932. The original operators had toured White Castle locations in Chicago and looked to replicate that chain’s success below the Mason-Dixon line by basically cloning the concept.
At my local Krystal, I ordered three sliders, priced at $1.19 each.
The look: In truth, the sliders from both Krystal and White Castle are very similar in appearance with a few notable differences. Krystal adds mustard as a standard condiment along with the grilled onions and slightly less acidic pickles, but of course customization is available. (And intelligent long-time customers know that asking the kitchen to add or subtract a component is the best way to ensure that your burger is fresh off the grill instead of plucked from under a heat lamp.)
The taste: A Krystal slider is a little less salty than the White Castle version and more tangy with the addition of mustard. Krystal also steams its buns a little more aggressively than White Castle, often leading to a situation where the bread becomes one with the meat, impossible to discern where one ends and the other begins. That’s a feature not a bug, because the entire concoction comes together as a mushy, comfortable mess of a two-bite burger. It’s easy to eat four without blinking and maybe even a dozen on a dare!
Chili’s
Nutrition:
Big Mouth Bites (Per Order)
Calories: 1,290
Fat: 80 g (Saturated Fat: 28 g, Trans Fat: 2.5 g)
Sodium: 2,670 mg
Carbs: 77 g (Fiber: 5 g, Sugar: 20 g)
Protein: 65 g
Of the two large national sit-down restaurant chains where I sampled burgers advertised as “sliders,” Chili’s probably came the closest to the gestalt of White Castle and Krystal. Its “Big Mouth Bites,” off the appetizer menu, include four to an order, sized for sharing with the table or hungrily hoarding to make a meal of it. Served with a generous helping of well-seasoned fries, a diner could definitely pick this plate over some of Chili’s other more inventive burgers, but I’m not sure that I would recommend that.
The look: Appropriately sized. The patties are served on four square-shaped miniature buns and garnished with bacon crumbles, American cheese, big chunks of sautéed onions, and a house-made ranch sauce. The absence of a pickle means there’s nothing green going on in this essentially beige-on-beige entrée, but the burger was thick enough to allow for cooking to a nice medium-well instead of the gray griddled slider patties that can sometimes look like someone took a cookie cutter to an elephant’s ear.
The taste: Slightly salty, but not unpleasantly so. The beefier patty—plus bacon—gives these sliders an edge over the standard-bearer and its closest imitator. Chili’s has created a glammed-up version of the original slider without completely changing the form. Well done! (Actually, medium-well.)
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