The first time I heard the term "slider," it was in reference to a White Castle burger — and, I assumed, the tiny rhomboid sandwich's unctuous ability to slide down the esophagus with a minimum of mastication and/or peristalsis. You have to applaud the counterintuitive advertising genius that not only celebrated the burger's nearly liquid consistency but turned it into a fast-food icon and a culinary staple of post-party dining.
Over the years, the term has come to refer to a broad class of diminutive sandwiches, from barbecue to grilled cheese, in which the defining characteristic is no longer the semi-solid state of the bread and meat but the portion size, which sources (OK, the Internet) pinpoint at around 3 inches long.
This breed of G-scale sandwich anchors the menu at Slider House on Division. The conjoined-sister restaurant to Soulshine Pizza serves about a dozen-and-a-half sammies stuffed with Angus beef, hot dogs, pork loin, fried chicken, bologna, cheese and mushrooms. For anyone who ever bellied up to the counter and wished for better late-night burgers, Slider House is the answer to your prayer.
There are three things you need to know about Slider House:
First, the sliders are served on buns from local bakery Provence. The soft, golden and mildly sweet bread grills up beautifully, meaning it can compensate for many shortcomings of fillings. (More on that later.)
Second, the joint serves from 11 a.m. until 3 a.m., with a full bar and roster of domestic, craft and imported beers (cans only) that can also compensate for many shortcomings of fillings.
And third. Forget third. Those two things about cover it: Good buns, canned beer.
Hey, that's the slogan of the restaurant. Actually it's, "Small bunz. great canz," but suffice it to say Slider House isn't pretending to be anything it's not. There's a certain grace in that honesty, not to mention a certain goodwill associated with the aluminum-recycling program that benefits autism research.
While we're being honest, we'll say up front that these sliders are not the best sandwiches we've ever had. The pile-ons of meat, lettuce, tomato, red onion, chili, cheese, barbecue sauce, blue cheese, Benton's bacon, mushrooms, basil, prosciutto, peppers and more are not blazing a culinary trail. But there's something for everyone, even vegetarians.
There's an argument to be made that the slider concept is fundamentally flawed. It's a math problem. Despite the smaller dimensions, ground beef still has to be cooked to temperature, which means that a greater percentage of the 3-ounce burger gets sacrificed to the grill-top gods of food safety. If you prefer pink meat to crisp bark, you're out of luck, because sliders wear a high concentration of char. Many of our baskets went back with a leftover crisp scab peeled from the patty. For that reason, we actually preferred the non-burger sliders, such as the Southern Comfort (fried chicken breast with Sriracha-honey glaze) and so-called slider dogs. The inevitable hybrids of hot dogs on hamburger buns, the four slider dogs include Ball Park (red onion), Chi-Town (relish, onion, tomato, sport peppers and celery salt), Sloppy Dog (house-made chili, cheddar cheese, onion), and Slaw Dog (pickled slaw, onion, smoked barbecue sauce).
Vegetarians will appreciate the fungus among us, the Fun-Guy, featuring portobello and a diced-mushroom trio topped with lacy Swiss, steamed peppers, feta and balsamic glaze.
In an unexpected twist, our favorite item on the terse menu was the elegantly simple Grill Cheese Capri — a molten mash-up of mozzarella, tomato and basil with a stroke of balsamic glaze, sandwiched between the inside-out halves of a bun, which look like toasted bread slices.
Nine sidecars accompany the sandwiches, among them house-made chips, fries, fried pickle chips, pickled slaw, chili and caprese salad. A favorite in our experience was sweet potato wedges whose crisp fried exterior gave way to a custard-soft core that could almost stand in as a dessert.
That's worth considering, given that Slider House doesn't technically have a dessert menu — for now at least. When we asked for the dessert options, the server apologized, but suggested we could go next door to Soulshine Pizza, where two cheesecakes and a bread pudding round out the offerings. On second thought, she offered to bring us dessert from next door and we could pay with two separate checks. It was an elegant solution that prevented us from having to give up our prime spot on the balmy patio.
Furthermore, Soulshine's mile-high cheesecake was the perfect balance of sweetness and tang, with the crumbly-creamy texture of an authentic New York recipe. Available plain or turtle-style with caramel and chocolate, the cheesecake is worth sticking your neck out for, or at least imposing on your server to run next door. In the future, the Slider House might want to coordinate with Soulshine to make the desserts readily available. In a place whose raison d'être is to satisfy late-night appetites, we're not going to be the last people to arrive with a craving for something sweet.
Slider House serves 11 a.m. to 3 a.m. daily.
Email arts@nashvillescene.com.
