And something to line my stomach before my flight back to Scotland. Hot Dog Chicago’s is dragged through the garden.
On account of its green add-ons and more later.
For many of us Europeans, and other types, the hot dog is our gateway to street food Stateside.
So if you got your first taste of a dwaaag from a Manhattan vendor you might imagine that they’re uniform across the country.
Hot Dog years
Wrong, there’s a pack of dogs out there.
While we’re road testing the two best known here, New York and Chicago.
Our source, or should that be sauce, are hot dogoligists (OK, we made that up).
At the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (and we didn’t make that up).
They run us through a history of the wiener and the origin claims of Frankfurt and Vienna.
With even Homer and the Ancient Greeks thrown in for good measure.
New York on a roll
Now, just like the hamburger, there is consensus that German immigrants took their sausages with them to the States.
And their first port of passage was naturally New York.
Where inevitably there are rival claims for who was the first to make a buck out of the-then dachshund sausage.
Either an immigrant in the Bowery district, along with milk rolls and sauerkraut in the 1860s.
Or more specifically baker Charles Feltman, who in 1871 opened up the first Coney Island stand.
Selling 3,684 dachshund sausages in a milk roll during his first year in business.
Hot stuff
How the sausages came to be known as hot dogs is also shrouded in mystery and mythology.
With one version crediting a vendor at the New York Polo Grounds on a cold April day.
Shouting ‘Get your dachshund sausages while they’re red hot!’
And sports cartoonist Tad Dorgan taking the story and running with it with a sketch.
Of barking dachshund sausages nestled warmly in rolls.
And because he couldn’t spell dachshund he wrote hot dog instead.
A tale of two US sittings
All of which is filling, albeit pretty interesting, in the discussion around the NY and Chicago hot dogs.
The NY offering leans heavily on the sauerkraut and brown mustard with onions.
While the Chicago dog which really took off with the World Fair in 1893 packs in a lot more.
Served on a poppy seed bun, topped with mustard, tomatoes, onions, sport peppers, green relish, dill pickles and celery salt.
Which I slurp down at the airport bar with a Boston Sam Adams in the company of Hawaiian Chase.
Because hot dogs are a communal event I’ve enjoyed from Washington and Ben’s Chilli Bowl to Venice Beach.
And Hot Dog Chicago’s is dragged through the garden. And me after it.