Sounds Awful

Slugburger
Borroum's Drugstore
On the square
Corinth, Mississippi

Slugburger. Sounds great, doesn't it? French, perhaps. I'd come a fair bit out of my way to find out, and here's why. Back on the East coast at Wilmington, my buddy Eric Parsons recommended that if I was into checking out local foods, I should pull through his part of Tennessee, southwestern, that is, and try a slugburger. He told me a bit about them, and his wife Sarah agreed that they are delicous. And she's pretty much a vegetarian. Eric grew up in Savannah, Tennessee, but a phone call to his Mom secured the tip that the slugburger's actual home was in Corinth Mississippi. Thus informed, I was off.

Corinth itself is a sweet little town just south of the Tennessee Mississippi border. There on the square you'll find Borroum's drugstore, a great big place with arrowheads and indian artifacts on one side, guns and civil war memorobilia on the other, and various taxidermically preserved heads and necks, ribbon racks, candy dispensers and stacks of kids books all in amongst them. I sided with the Indians and ordered a slugburger, onion rings and a vanilla milkshake.

Now, just what is a slugburger? Thankfully, no slugs are involved whatsoever. Probably the menu itself can describe it as well as I can, though perhaps without so many witty asides. Here's what it has to say:

"Slugburgers are a mixture of ground pork, soy flour and spices. The mixture is flattened into a patty and deep fried in vegetable fat. The patty is placed on a hamburger bun with a garnish of mustard, pickle and onion. Developed during the depression when money was scarce and so was meat, slugburgers were made with a mixture of beef and pork, potato flour as an extender, and spices, then fried in animal fat. Mrs. Weeks, credited with creating one of the first, found the "burgers" were a way to make meat go a little farther at the family hamburger stand. Selling for a nickel, sometimes called a slug, the imitation hamburgers became known as slugburgers."

Deep fried meat? Count me in. Crunchy, the pickle and onion doing there part as well. It reminded me a bit of fried Spam, and don't you pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. In fact, it was a lot like the white trash classic, fried Spam on white with mustard, though not quite as salty. The addition of the soy flour gives that grease something more to grab ahold of and crisp up, so it excels in the texture department. Likewise the onion rings, crunch, crunch, crunch. And that shake would take your grandpa right back to the good old days he's always on about. It was bona fide.

Definitely worth the trip. A gracious thanks to Eric Parsons and the people of Corinth, who, it turns out, had more up there sleeve than this little number.