White Castle

What a pleasant surprise! This White Castle has been completely remodeled and now features "BLAZE - The Modern Barbecue," a sort of restaurant-within-a-restaurant. It is the only one in the world, a pilot that I hope will be copied in many White Castles or spun off into its own chain.

The new restaurant fare features barbecue: six kinds of meat - pulled chicken, carnitas, Andouille sausage, Chinese char sui pork, smoked turkey and beef brisket. Dinners may be ordered with one or two sides and all come with a nice little loaf of cornbread - with or without jalapenos baked inside. They also have a sloppy Joe that my nephew likes a lot.

There is a great assortment of sides with a home cooking bent, including: mac and cheese, loaded potato salad, Southwestern black beans and corn, redskin mashed potatoes, creamy coleslaw, BBQ baked beans (my personal favorite), corn on the cob, and Brunswick stew.

Once you have your meal, you select your sauces from an assortment. They are in pumps so they are easy to pump onto your plate or fill little plastic containers. There five sauces to choose from. Three are mild: Blaze BQ (my fav), Smokin' Tomato Blaze, Sweet Asian Blaze. Blazin' Mustard and Blazin' Chili rate 3 and 4 flames on the Blaze sauce hottness scale. All are good and the two hotties, while warm enough to get a little perspiration going, are not going to hurt anybody.

Of course they still have all of the standard White Castle favorites that made them famous. They have an array of drinks and feature Coke products, which puts them closer to my heart, For dessert there are two kinds of pie.

The place is bright and clean, with a cool graphic along one wall that references the original White Castle restaurants. This is fast-ish food (go in and sit down to eat - it would be challenging to eat while driving a car)  with a new twist. It's fun and delicious.

The only problem I can see with Blaze is the job of getting new customers familiar with the new choices. Once that is done, I think people will come back again and again. Get in today and try it while it's still the only one on the planet!

UPDATE 5/17/11: Just ate lunch here (pulled pork dinner) and was sad to see the carnitas, Andouille sausage, Chinese char sui pork, and smoked turkey have all been discontinued due to their unpopularity. Oh, well... Also noted the pulled pork seemed overly salty and had a rub type seasoning on it. It was still really good though and it fell apart nicely.

The staff at this place earned all these stars.  All of the ladies working here were so friendly in a down home southern way.  They showered us with thank yous and smiles.  

The food was great too.