You go girl!
Yep. I won’t make them at home because the breading always falls off. Luckily strangers will make them for me for a few bucks. Great with ribs.
Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
Deep fried pickles taste exactly like normal pickles but they’re warm. Which is weird and kinda gross. The breading never stays on regardless of where you get them from. Absolutely no point in deep frying pickles wtf.
Well I’ve grown used to warm pickles. I at a lot of McDonald’s burgers as a youngster. But I see your point.
If it’s falling off, they’re not doing it right.
My understanding, from speaking to the manager at my local Chili’s, is that you pat the pickle slices dry. Not too hard. Then into seasoned flour and then batter. Small batch frying. Essentially per order. It works for me. Sure some falls off but when they are hot they’re great. This guy Jeff, the manager, is also one of the managers that tests new recipes at his Chili’s. So he has company feedback.
I really love the place. We first went there when we moved here. It was near the motel we were staying at waiting to find a house. We became friends with the folks working there. Two of the bartenders got married and we were invited to their wedding. It’s our home bar. Joke away.
Meet the Texas Burger.
This is a delicacy I can only get about 4 months out of the year, and only in Elyria, Ohio. Home of one of the last Dog n Suds drive ins on the planet. A chain of 500+ stores at some point before I was born, as long as I’ve been alive I only remember this one and have always stopped there at least a few times every summer.
It’s the kind of place where you never get out of your car. When you’re ready to order, you turn on your headlights. The waitress hooks a little tray right on your car window and brings your food out to you. They make rootbeer too, which is delicious and by far creamier than any other I’ve ever had.
This place employs mostly high school / college age kids, so it doesn’t open until like late April / early May when they start getting out of school, and then closes right around the middle of August every year. IT SUCKS. I go 8 months out of the year craving a Texas burger and it makes me insane. DONT THESE PEOPLE LIKE MONEY OR WHAT?!
I know one day Ilene the owner is going to die or sell it off or something and then that will probably be the end of it :( But it’s awesome and I can’t remember a summer without this place and I wish you guys could all try it too :D
But what the fuck IS it?
Nothing all that crazy honestly. Similar to a Big Boy perhaps?
From Wikipedia:
“Dog n Suds serves fast-food staples including hamburgers, french fries, and soft drinks. Its trademark items include Coney Island hot dogs (the “Dog”) and its own root beer served in frosted glass mugs (the “Suds”). One of its popular hamburgers is the Texas Burger, made with two meat patties, a three-part bun, a slice of cheese on the top patty, lettuce and house sauce on the middle bun, and Coney sauce on the bottom bun.”
The “house sauce” is a white mayo based sauce that’s a little sweet and has bits of pickle in it. Again, similar to a Big Boy. The unique thing is how they sort of char the burger, though. I’ve spent time looking into this and have no clue how they do it or how I could replicate it at home.
Here:
It’s not a great picture I know, but see those grill mark looking charred bits in the middle? That isn’t burnt. Or, well, maybe it is but it doesn’t taste like burnt hamburger. It tastes like some kind of smokey/meaty SOMETHING that adds so much flavor to the burger. I guess it’s sorta like the char broiling that Burger King does, but this tastes WAY better. I could crank a grill way up high and char some marks into a burger but it wouldn’t taste like this. Maybe they just haven’t cleaned the grill in 60 years and that’s the secret? Hence why this is in this thread :P
Yeah. That works. Especially if the employees are teenagers. Cleaning a grill takes a lot of muscle and endurance.
A short story. Perhaps a vignette. More like a fragment, from my life. 9 years old. In Addison, Illinois. Visiting my aunt Nettie in the summer. Uncle Dom was taking me, my mother and two of my cousins, Maria and Patricia, to the movies.
I pictured the Beverly theater near my Brooklyn home. Instead we drove up to what I thought was a toll booth. Then we entered. It was a drive-in.
A huge area full of small trees. No. Not small trees. Uncle Dom pulled into a spot halfway to a… giant wall?
Then he rolled his window halfway up and hooked a device to it. What the fuck is going on? What is this shit? Uncle Dom gave the three of us money and said, “Go to that place over there.” It was like a concrete bunker in the distance. “Get some popcorn and drinks. And whatever you want. Then come back here. Okay?”
Chorus: Okay uncle Dom.
And off we go. It was a simple straight line to the concession stand.
When we got there I was fucking amazed. They Had Everything. The girls ordered the usual popcorn and drinks. I wanted a hamburger. Mainly because I saw people opening their hamburgers and PUMPING KETCHUP on them. That’s it. I got two hamburgers.
When I got to the pump I opened the burgers. Now I understand that I was like 9 years old. And my perception may be skewed because of the time since then.
But the burgers were like meat paste smeared on a bun. But I didn’t care. Because they smelled, to my childish nose, like heaven. I covered them in ketchup and scarfed them down like manna itself.
Then I decided to get back to the car. Which would have been fine. Except that there were a lot of new cars between me and the car.
As a kid I decided to do the right thing. There was a small playground next to the concession stand. So I played there with other lost children. Until my mother appeared and dragged me back to the car. By my hair.
Close the curtain here.
The point is, I would REALLY like to eat those hamburger paste sandwiches again. They were AWESOME!
+1 You go girl :D
Ah the Cascade drive in. Still around even, went there for a double feature Planes 2/ Guardians of the Galaxy. Was my sons first trip to the movies since nobody cares if your 6 month old starts crying since you’re in your own car. Also great on Tuesdays with a $10 per car entrance fee.
They’re not all as crazy as what you see at the minor league stadiums, but the Royals at least weren’t holding back: “The Pulled Pork Patty Melt is a funnel cake with BBQ pulled pork, fried onion, shredded cheddar, and Monterey Jack cheese WITH bacon, and a jalapeño skewer.”
Eric those look similar to an NC variant of that. Here we have the burger, chili, and slaw, sometimes with cheese on the burger as well. It sounds kind of crazy but the flavors work very well, the slaw cuts through the heaviness of the chili/burger but also provides crunch and a mayo-style sauce.
I had the Taco Bell chicken chips the other day at lunch. Not horrible. I would compare them to similar versions like the chicken fries that some other restaurants have. They seemed a bit too gimmicky overall though. Also the nacho ceese with them as a sauce was pretty nasty.
Those all look like things that (if I didn’t care about staying alive) I’d willingly eat on a regular basis. Those creations remind me of a local delicacy from a korean fusion restaurant in Boston. Let me present the shojonator…two beef patties with kimcheese (kimchi velveeta) and bacon on black sesame seed bao.
I WOULD DEVOUR THAT!
Know what? I’d eat the hell out of that.