On Wednesday night, June 5, Mary Kate and I settled into a boot at PDT, the famous cocktail bar in the East Village neighborhood of New York, to formally sample the latest addition to the speakeasy’s menu of elevated hot dogs: the Simonson Dog.
The new hot dog, a collaboration between myself and Crif Dogs, PDT’s sister eatery, went on the menu June 1 and will remain there at least through the summer. It is a mash-up of the regional hot dog styles of Baltimore, Providence and New Jersey, complete with mustard, chopped onion, meat sauce and pork roll.
(I will tell the story of how the Simonson Dog came to be tomorrow, in the final post of Hot Dog Week.)
Joining us in the booth were Adam Platt, the eminent food writer and restaurant critic from New York magazine, and Allen Katz, an owner of the New York Distilling Company in Brooklyn, which makes Jaywalk Rye and Dorothy Parker Gin.
Four Simonson dogs and various cocktails were ordered up and quickly consumed. PDT/Crif Dogs did a great job with the Simonson Dog, both in presentation and in culinary terms. Special praise was reserved for the custom meat sauce, a blend of our own invention, that adorns the dog. This Field Report is a short snippet of a longer discussion of the dog’s merits.
The fact that I was unable to hear or say the word “bolognese” correctly is a testament to the fact that PDT cocktails have maintained their potency to this day!
Below is a short video, in which Platt and I agree that there is “a lot going on” with the Simonson Dog.
Field Report: PDT/Crif Dogs