Here's The Dish That Won White Castle's 2023 Slider Showdown
White Castle created the first modern fast food hamburger (even if they weren't technically the first fast food chain), and they've continued growing on that legacy with a new contest, launched in the summer of 2023, that sought to find a creative recipe providing the best take on their iconic sliders. We now know the first-ever winner in the White Castle Slider Showdown contest.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the victor is a professional chef named Yoshiharu Sogi of Sonoma, California, who wowed the White Castle judges with a surprisingly refined slider dish he calls the French Sliders Brunch that offers a delightful mixture of breakfast flavors.
According to a press release, Sogi and his wife (owners of a catering business) have long been White Castle fans and often bring sliders to potluck parties so he's no doubt logged time playing with creative preparations. For his grand prize, Sogi wins a year's worth of free White Castle sliders, along with plenty of merch and a trip to White Castle's home office in Ohio.
The winning White Castle dish is remarkably creative
As part of the White Castle Slider Showdown contest, the recipe had to include at least six White Castle beef sliders (from a restaurant or a grocery store) and it had to be posted on Instagram or TikTok. It's easy to see why Yoshiharu Sogi's French Sliders Brunch got such big attention from social media.
It combines strawberries, yogurt cream cheese, bacon, nutmeg, maple syrup, and the burger patties from the White Castle sliders, while the top of the slider buns are transformed into something that can only be described as cinnamon-flavored French toast waffles to serve as the base for the whole endeavor. The bottom buns, meanwhile, are turned into homemade croutons for a side salad. It's a completely creative reimagining of the ingredients at hand, but it's surprisingly not hard to make at home.
Then again, one crucial aspect to White Castle's slider success lies in its simplicity. Sogi summed it up best, as he stated in a press release: "The basic structure of White Castle Sliders is simple, so there is a lot of room to add your own creations."