A Short History of Franksgiving
There's a Holiday After Thanksgiving. Here's How to Celebrate It.
My stepson Richard’s favorite holiday is Franksgiving. He told me so this year and I swelled with pride. It meant that he cherished family tradition and had taken his heritage to heart.
You may not have heard of Franksgiving. It takes places on the day after Thanksgiving and consists of driving to a place that sells hot dogs and then eating hot dogs and then giving thanks. It dates way back—to 2018.
But, seriously folks. Let me explain. Every holiday needs its antidote. We who celebrate Christmas may love it. But we’re all secretly happy when it’s over because, frankly, it’s exhausting, and we can finally get our home back to looking like normal and stop spending so much money. The Fourth of July can be fun, but fireworks are best kept to one day a year.
The same goes for Thanksgiving. I love getting together with family and feasting with them. The cooking, the conversing and cornucopia are all joyous. But all that family and food can be overwhelming, and, the next day, there’s nothing better than some alone time and a meal that don’t take several days to prepare.
In 2018, I spent Thanksgiving with my in-laws on Long Beach Island in New Jersey. My wife Mary Kate did the cooking, so we ate well. We watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, a football game or two, and caught up with relatives.
The next day, we wanted nothing more than a complete change of pace. But what sort of change? Where to go, what to do on the day after Thanksgiving? We didn’t want to shop, we knew that much.
Mary Kate had been telling me for years about a place called Hot Dog Johnny’s that her father used to take her to. It was an old hot dog joint in a small town called Buttzville, way over on the west side of New Jersey, almost in Pennsylvania. But the talk never led anywhere, because the drive to Hot Dog Johnny’s was considerable. That day after the 2018 Thanksgiving, however, a long pointless drive across the state sounded like a fantastic release. So a plan was hatched. “Franksgiving,” Mary Kate called the expedition.
We left early. The drive took longer than it needed to. Mary Kate used the opportunity to travel down memory lane. We stopped in Somerville to see her childhood home; Manville to locate the building that had once been a family bar; and Millstone to see the old workshop where Richard had trained to be a blacksmith when he was a kid. It was a perfect autumn day, made for such leisurely Sunday driving.
Eventually, we got to Hot Dog Johnny’s. It emerged on an empty patch of U.S. Route 46 like a mirage of picture-perfect Americana. An enormous wooden sign announced they served “frosted" birch beer and “fresh” buttermilk. At the center of a large tract of land was a circular green building with diamond shaped windows. There was a playground nearby and a river flowed behind the stand. They only accepted cash.
And, so, while the rest of the world was filling their carts with bargains on Black Friday, we filled our guts with hot dogs and fries. And I’ll wager we walked away more satisfied than anyone who waited in line on Thursday night for the Walmart to open. I ordered both the birch beer and buttermilk because, well: Hot Dog Johnny, I accept your challenge! The buttermilk was absurd, a practical joke—I’ll never order that again (MK’s dad would have disagreed with me; he patronized Johnny’s from the 1940s on and always ordered the buttermilk); but the birch beer was quite a good accompaniment to the franks. Johnny’s has a special way with hot dogs. They fry them in peanut oil and top them with mustard, chopped onion and a pickle spear. They were excellent. The hand-cut fries were just as good.
But, more importantly, a palpable sense of relief washed over us. Thanksgiving is a lot of work—not just all of the cooking and preparation, but the social politics inherent in large family gatherings. I love it all, I really do. But it can be depleting. Franksgiving, on the other hand, is no work at all, only pleasure. Someone else does the cooking. It requires little of you, both in terms of money and time. And the experience is over in minutes (depending on how far away the hot dog stand is).
Also, hot dogs are as American as turkey and pumpkin pie. So Franksgiving is a fitting coda to Thanksgiving, that most American of all holidays.
(This was the trip, incidentally, that led me to take up hot dog culture as a field of study, one I continue to pursue today.)
Since then, we’ve celebrated Franksgiving every year. Richard has been to all but one. My son Asher joined us in 2019 and has been to two. (Asher is a particularly good sport about the whole thing. My first wife was Jewish and insisted that Asher be brought up eating kosher. He likes hot dogs; Hebrew National are among the best weiners you can buy. But hot dog stands rarely sell kosher dogs. So, Asher orders what he can order on Franksgiving, usually fries and a grilled cheese.)
We try to mix it up each year, choosing a different destination. In 2019, we were in Wisconsin, having Thanksgiving at my Aunt Sandy’s house in Elm Grove. The next day, Mary Kate, Asher and I were due to catch a performance of a play at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, directed by my brother Eric. So, on the way down, we stopped at the magnificent Superdawg in northern Chicago.
Superdawg is a classic drive-in that I first experienced while a student at Northwestern University in the 1980s. There are statues of a he-man hot dog and his lady fair on the roof. Superdawg does a fantastic version of the classic Chicago-style, dragged-through-the-garden hot dog. It was a great Franksgiving.
In 2020, all four of us—me, Mary Kate, Richard and Asher—were together for Franksgiving for the very first time. We drove to Clifton, New Jersey, arguably the hot dog capital of the Garden State. Our schedule was ambitious. We made three stops: Rutt’s Hut, The New Corral and The Hot Grill. A town like Clifton can make that sort of miracle happen.
The pandemic made things tricky. Aiming for contactless ordering, we took all our dogs to go and ate then either in or on the car. Asher had never been to Rutt’s Hut, which is often touted as the best dog in Jersey. Its heavy brick building is perched right above a teeming highway. As we ate our franks on the roof of the car, watching the cars speed by, Asher said, “This may be the most New Jersey place ever.”
Last year, it was just Richard, Mary Kate and I and we drove down to New Brunswick and dined at Destination Dogs, so called because they serve a wide variety of franks meant to evoke various locales, including Newark, Kansas City, Detroit, Waco, Green Bay, Vietnam, Germany and Canada. This was certainly the fanciest hot dog place we’d gone to, and the youngest; it opened in 2012. It was also the first time we met the owners and that they were aware that we were there to celebrate a thing we called Franksgiving. They were not displeased with the idea!
What’s on the docket for 2022? Well, that’s still in the works. It may involve a two-state run. Stay tuned. There will be an extensive Field Report on Nov. 25.
Interested in joining in on the fun? Well, everyone is welcome! And it’s easy. Just pick out a promising hot dog place on the map, drive there and dig in. We have found that most hot dog stands are open the day after Thanksgiving. If you leave a comment here telling me where you are, I can make a recommendation or two.
You can dine on premise if you like. But take-out is fine, and delivery is acceptable. But no making your own dogs! Franksgiving is not about cooking, not about work. Vegetarian or vegan? Don't worry. In today’s world, hot dog places that offer no-meat franks are increasingly common.
If you do happen to make a Franksgiving excursion, and share the experience on Instagram, I promise to repost it! I may even post some highlights in this space.
Odds and Ends…
The American Slovak Club in Lorain, Ohio, serves fish fry every Friday. Both perch and walleye, the two greatest fish-fry fishes, are available… The historic West Side Market Cafe in downtown Cleveland serves one of the best breakfasts in the nation. Recommended: the Hot Mess, made up of Yukon gold home fries piled high and topped with scrambled eggs, cheddar, bacon, and smothered in sausage gravy. Served with a choice of toast. …Paul Feig, the filmmaker, entertained many of us during the early pandemic with his daily Instagram Live cocktail hours. Now, Feig has written a cocktail book called Cocktail Time. It will be released on Nov. 15… The IACP Media + Cookbook Awards will be held this Friday afternoon, Nov. 18, in New York City. Among the nominees is my own Mezcal and Tequila Cocktails!… The annual Christmas bar pop-up Beachbum Berry’s Sippin’ Santa will commence at Latitude 29 in New Orleans on Nov. 17 and will run through Christmas Eve… Emily Timberlake, my old editor at Ten Speed Press, and now an author in her own right, spoke with Brad Thomas Parsons over at the Last Call newsletter… The Great Jones Distillery in Manhattan will launch its holiday pop-up, Great Jones Whiskey Wonderland, on Nov. 17… Wednesday, Nov. 15, is the 50th anniversary of the first time Lucy held a football for Charlie Brown in the “Peanuts” comic strip.
Cheers to this! I don’t believe there are any outposts of note in Kansas City, however I like to think I celebrated Franksgiving earlier this fall when work took me to Detroit, and I gave franks at American Coney Island (earmarked after reading your post).
Aw man the Jonesville drive-in is closed for the season.