Best Hot Dog
 

Where is the best Hot Dog?
My favorite - Famous Uncle Al's on Shore Drive in Virginia Beach. (I like it better than Nathan's). Honestly, though, I don't generally get a hot dog when travelling so would appreciate any local opinions. It would be some good info for a quick lunch.

Pinks on Melrose in LA.

decarie hot dog, ville st-laurent, montreal island, canada.
they also make the best poutine anywhere.

gotta be coney island ;) .. some japanese guy goes there every year just to eat 50+ :D

For me, the best hot dog is a genuine Kosher frankfurter — usually Hebrew National — on a hot dog bun, topped with a generous application of spicy brown authentic Kosher delicatessen mustard — usually Ba-Tampte (from the Canarsie section of Brooklyn) or Hebrew National brands. Sauerkraut is optional but welcome. I usually prepare them outside on the grill at home, or I enjoy them at any number of Kosher delicatessens in New York.

Nathan’s Famous in Coney Island comes second, and it is the only non-Kosher frankfurter that I enjoy.

Hot Doug's
 

No Question about it, Hot Doug's in Chicago :-: :-: :-: .

www.hotdougs.com

Welcome to Hot Doug's!
The Sausage Superstore and
Encased Meat Emporium
3324 North California, Chicago, IL 60618
Phone: (773) 279-9550
Fax: (773) 279-9553

Wow....some of their offerings are a bit exotic and bizarre. :eek:



I personally like Portillo's and I'm thrilled that they've opened their first CA store not far from where I live.
As much as I like their Chicago dogs, I order their Italian Beef with hot peppers three out of four visits.

Crif Dogs in NYC
hot dogs + bacon = good.
all dogs are wrapped in crispy bacon. caveat: i have never sampled one while sober.

Nathan's hot dogs at their original location in Coney Island. Great to go there before a ballgame at Keyspan Park.

Red Hot Lovers, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Their Chicago Dog beats anything I've ever had in Chicago (although to be fair, the typical Chicago Dog is meant to be ingested between the hours of 2 and 4 am when one is in a state such that the quality of the product really doesn't matter all that much)!

The Stand in Encino, Ca.makes some respectible dogs. I like the Bratwurst.

http://www.thestandlink.com/page2.html

Sunset in summertime Kyoto, heading out for an evening stroll and picking up a spicy chili dog at the Imadegawa MOS. ;)

The hot dog king of Japan: http://www.mos.co.jp/menu/hotdog/spicy_chili/

mosburger.....congrat's on reaching 1,000 posts!
And what do you suppose the hot dog that's pictured is made from? Are there a lot of beef cattle roaming the land ?
Serious question as I have not spent anytime in Japan except at the airport.

Blackies in Cheshire, CT. Always closed on Fridays

Cheers on the spamming recognition. And I would guess the MOS beef is from cattle that has lived a satisfying life somewhere in the Australian outback or Midwest US.

Gray's Papaya in New York!

Portillo's is in CA?

I love Varsity in Atlanta.

Best everyday hot dog...Costco. ^

They opened their first non-Chicagoland store in Buena Park, CA a few months ago. It's been packed to the rafters ever since opening day.
In a pre-opening press interview the owners of Portillo's said if the Buena Park store was successful they would "blanket" CA with new units.

I would guess there are more than a few skin-on, non-kosher franks that would meet your seal of approval, just perhaps have not had the chance to experience them. I would also guess that the east coast/Nathan’s thing is playing a part as well in your preference.
Hot Doug’s http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=308456 is great for their exotic sausages but NOT for their hot dog. The duck fat fries at Hot Doug’s do not come close to being as savory as the duck fat fries at Sweet & Savories, post #29 in this thread from the Chicago Forum: http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=457684

Here is a long running thread of the best hot dog in Chicago from the Chicago Forum:
http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=334192


--

Hopefully they won't follow the Krispy Kreme model. :rolleyes: I think a good model was In-n-Out. They did't go bonkers putting stores on every corner, and the stores they have a very busy.

They seem to be going pretty slow even in the Chicago area. They've been in business for over 40 years and only have 30 units open. And many of them are new in just the last few years.

The Portillo's model of "blanket" would be maybe 25 stores between Simi Valley and the Mexican border over the next 10 years. It took them forever just to come east of I-294 in Chicago from their NW Cook and DuPage base.

This may actually be worth a drive down to OC to check out. I've been happy with the hot dogs at Rubin's Red Hots in Sherman Oaks (the restaurant actually bought a piece of El track to put his stand under), but this sounds interesting...and they have Italian beef, too. Guess I'll have to make a stop on the next trip down to Disneyland.

I see that Pink's in LA had a cameo in Hell's Kitchen earlier this week! Pink's make great hotdogs! :)

The Snack Stand in Madison Park in NYC. (23rd Street and Madison Ave). Their Taxi Dog is fantastic. Combo of onions and kraut on a dog. Also great fries and shakes to go with it.

Anywhere that puts the following on a Dog has my vote:

Onion
Bacon
Chili Salsa
Cream Cheese (aka Philly)
Cheddar Cheese

I like to have the bun buttered with the Cream Cheese, then put a layer of chili salsa, then the Dog, then cheddar cheese, then onion, then bacon, then more cheddar.

You can also add some sauerkraut on there too, if you're game :)

Throw some avocado on there too and you've got The Heart Surgeon's Delight™. ;)

I am kind of amazed it took until the 17th post for the first mention of Costco to show up. For me, a toss up between Nathans in Coney Island and Pinks in LA. But I have to mention the guy that runs a stand in the summer in ANC. He's down on 3rd or 4th st downtown where all the tourists hang out.. Great hot dogs and even has spicy reindeer sausage.

They have added a webcam now to check the lines.

And it's called Shake Shack, not Snack Stand. Here's the website with a link to the Shack Cam:

www.shakeshacknyc.com

Well, it is NOT at the "Toot'n Whistle", the cafe/shack beside the Picton stop for the Coastal Pacific Train to Christchurch in New Zealand. I made the bad decision to order a "hot dog" here a few years ago. I ordered it because I was suffering from a nasty migraine-like headache, craved something salty/tangy - and this was the only thing on the menu that matched my craving. I wish I had known that hot dogs in New Zealand are not the same thing as hot dogs in North America. They're more like pogos, but not as good - imagine a greasy, tasteless, battered, deep-fried sausage on a stick. Aka "d*** on a stick" and a rather cringe-inducing product to eat in public.

Canarsie, were the franks better at Joe's South Shore Deli or Grabsteins? I worked at the Mill Basin Deli so I was partial to theirs...

From August's Mid-Atlantic Brewing News
 

I'm posting something I wrote as a sidebar in next month's food and beer issue of Mid-Atlantic Brewing News (My editor says you've got to promise to get copies anyway) that seems appropriate to this thread.

<BEGIN COPY>

Hail the humble hot dog as accompaniment to cold beer. You could consider its history. Rather, you could if anyone really knew its history for sure.

It’s said the frankfurter was created in Frankfurt. Unless it’s a wiener because it was invented in Vienna (in German, Wien).

The burghers of Frankfurt say the Viennese choose to ignore that the purported inventor of the wiener learned to make sausage in their city. On this topic, what the Viennese choose to ignore are the burghers of Frankfurt.

Known as hot dachshund sausages in the 1800s for their resemblance to the long thin dogs, the name hot dog was supposedly coined in 1901 by New York newspaper cartoonist Tad Dorgan. Facing an imminent deadline and uncertain how to spell dachshund, he captioned them “hot dogs” instead.

However, no copy of that cartoon has ever been found, and students at Yale University were eating and writing about “hot dogs” years earlier.

A hot dog in English is a “perrito caliente” in Spanish, a “cane caldo” in Italian and a “chien chaud” to the French.

When baseball player Barry Bonds visited Philadelphia in May he was one homer shy of Babe Ruth’s career home run total of 714. A fan’s banner hanging in the outfield of the Phillies' Citizens Bank Park reminded the San Francisco Giants slugger accused of using illegal performance-enhancing substances, “Ruth did it on hot dogs and beer.”

Some say being cooked in beer is the secret of baseball’s top-selling Dodger Dog but those in charge of ballpark concessions in Los Angeles deny that’s how they sold nearly two million of the team’s trademark hot dogs last season.

According to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, on the Internet at www.hot-dog.org, the average per capita hot dog consumption in America is 60 per year and over seven billion hot dogs will be eaten in the U.S. between Memorial Day and Labor Day, 155 million of them during the Fourth of July holiday alone. The council’s researchers found that the most popular condiment on a hot dog is mustard, although when kids were asked what they’d put on a hot dog “if Mom wasn’t watching,” 25 percent picked chocolate sauce.

One of the unsolved riddles of the universe asked by a Nazi-fighting Tibetan mystic kung-fu master portrayed by actor Chow Yun-Fat in the somewhat ludicrous 2003 film The Bulletproof Monk is, “Why do hot dogs come in packages of ten, but hot dog buns only come in packages of just eight?”

Earlier this year a tasting panel organized by food section editors of the Arizona Republic newspaper selected Scotland’s Fraoch Heather Ale as the best beer to pair with a grilled hot dog. “Absolutely great,” enthused Mark Tarbell, owner and chef of the national-award-winning Tarbell’s Restaurant in Phoenix, “the dog brought out the fruity character in the ale.” New Belgium Brewing Company’s Fat Tire Amber Ale was the Arizona panel’s second choice, while Bud Light “was the beer whose flavors washed away when munching on the dog.”

<END COPY>

I have to go with Lawton's Famous Frankfurters in Lawrence, Massachusetts




Anyone ever had a dog at "Swanky Franks" in Norwalk, CT? I've passed by many times, but always on a full stomach. I'd love to try 'em. I love the name.

Anybody that serves Martin Rosol hot dogs:

www.martinrosols.com

Who could grow up in central CT and not know Frankie's?

Which character on MASH was all about his hometowns hotdogs?

someplace in Akron Ohio right?

re HOT DOGS,,,anyone remember JOE & NEMO?
 

YUMMY SINAI BRAND at Costco. I just flash my expired card whenever I
want one.

Yocco's in Allentown, PA is pretty strong.

Toledo, not Akron, for Tony Packo's
 

I believe you're thinking of Cpl. (later Sgt.) Max Klinger, who regularly raved about the hot dogs from Tony Packo's.

Jamie Farr, who played Klinger on M*A*S*H, was a native of Toledo so when he had the chance to ad-lib a little of Klinger's personal history, he made him from Toledo as well. According to Tony Packo's website:

In the episode that made Packo's future, a man playing a television newsman talked to Klinger about his hometown. Farr wrote a little local color into his reply. The lines read, "If you're ever in Toledo, Ohio, on the Hungarian side of town, Tony Packo's got the greatest Hungarian hot dogs. Thirty-five cents..." Thus a new epoch began. The name appealed to the scriptwriters, who wrote Packo's into five subsequent episodes. In one show the mobile hospital unit sent to Packo's for sausage casings to be used in a blood-filtering machine.

Undoubtedly Portillo's in Chicago