Welcome to Hot Dog Week!

The Mix Kicks Off Summer With a State-by-State Guide to Hot-Dogging It.

Jun 02, 2024

Comfort Dogs

I attended a wedding in New Jersey yesterday. It got me to thinking about a previous wedding I went to in the Garden State, a ceremony in 2019; the most recent wedding we went to; the last wedding before Covid.

I was with Mary Kate and her son Richard then. It had been a fun wedding. A string quartet played the theme from “Game of Thrones,” which was just then wrapping up its final season. Dinner concluded with the “Viennese Hour,” in which an enormous curtain drew back to reveal a Vegas-like display of dozens of opulent dessert stations.

Weddings can be mentally and socially exhausting, however, and afterwards you crave nothing more than release—to trade in your suit for a t-shirt, as it were. As we settled into our car, I noticed we were only five miles from Jimmy Buff’s, one of Jersey’s many hot dog institutions. Should we? Yes, we should. Start your engines.

This was only six months after we first founded and celebrated Franksgiving with a cross-state drive to Hot Dog Johnny’s in western Jersey. My eyes have been opened to New Jersey’s status as a master of the hot dog arts. I was deep in discovery mode and trying to visit as many historic hot dog stands as possible. Jimmy Buff’s was a revelatory experience. As I wrote in Grub Street the following year:

It was here I realized how much I still had to learn about Jersey hot-dog culture. Jimmy Buff’s dogs weren’t anything like Johnny’s. They weren’t even anything like hot dogs as I had grown to understand them. Buff’s jams its franks inside a huge wedge of round “pizza bread” and tops it with piles of fried peppers, onions, and potatoes, all of which were drawn from the same gully of boiling oil. The style, which originated at Buff’s and is carried out by numerous joints in the state, is called an “Italian hot dog” or “Newark-style.” Imagine getting a hot dog with the works and fries and having it served to you inside a huge, puffy pita. It’s like that. It is equal parts disorienting and delicious.

One month later, I had a similar adventure. I flew into Chicago to attend a funeral in Rockford. The trip took my rental car right by Gene & Jude’s, a Windy City hot dog joint of renown. And so I discovered one of my favorite hot dogs in the world, one where they piled the accompanying French fries on top of the dog, which is served in semi-traditional Chicago “dragged through the garden” style.

I returned to Gene & Jude’s this past Franksgiving, which found me in Chicago with Mary Kate, my son Asher and friend Mark Ward. That day we also visited Superdawg, a hot dog stand that needs no introduction, even to the hot dog naif.

Superdawg may have been the first important frankfurter icon I was ever introduced to, and it was certainly my introduction to the Chicago style of hot dog. (I grew up in Wisconsin, where there is no particular native style of hot dog preparation.) I was attending Northwestern University in nearby Evanston. Most people who went to Northwestern hailed from far away—New York or Ohio or California. But there was one girl in my dorm who was, for lack of a better word, a townie. She grew up near Superdawg and often talked about it in glowing terms, as if it were one of the seven wonders of the world. Finally, one day, we went. She had not been exagerating. It was a glory of mid-century Americana.

Budget Dogs

There were other early hot dog discoveries. Shortly after college, I stayed with my brother in Chicago’s Irving Park neighborhood. Every time I exited the “L” station and walked to his apartment, I passed an enormous “Vienna Beef” sign. I did not know at the time that Vienna Beef provided the hot dogs for most of the Chicago stands. At the time, I just thought it strange that a Chicago meat packer banked its reputation on the capital of Austria.

Nearby, was an unassuming place called Byron’s Hot Dogs. It also had a Vienna Beef sign. I patronized it because it was cheap and I had no money. It helped that the dogs were delicious.

Another of my first destinations for a Chicago hot dog fix was humbler still. Whenever possible, I have stayed at the Palmer House when I visit Chicago, because I like old hotels. It is frustratingly difficult to get a Chicago hot dog in downtown Chicago; all the great stands are on the outskirts of the city. But, on the same block as the Palmer House, on Adams Street, was a hole in the wall called Max’s Take Out. I think the storefront was ten feet across. It looked sketchy. But the dogs were solid, the prices low and it was open early.

Sadly, Max’s closed during Covid, leaving the Loop again bereft of the city’s signature treat.

These days, I can never be sure I’ll get to a Chicago hot dog stands during my whirlwind visits to the city. So I circumvent potential tragedy by grabbing a dog in O’Hare either right after I arrive or just before I depart. And I know just where to go. It’s called Hot Dog Express, a small stand opposite gate E3. They have a Vienna Beef sign, of course, and also serve individual deep-dish pies from Pizzeria Uno. It looks like a total tourist trap. But, because their business is always brisk, the hot dogs are quite good and always freshly made. I have never been there when my hot dog has not been assembled on the spot. And its the cheapest meal you’re going to get at O’Hare.

In my first years in New York, my dining choices were informed by poverty. I haven’t had a dirty water dog off a Manhattan hot dog cart in decades, but in my twenties, I downed plenty. I wasn’t wary of them. I was young and the young are impervious to health worries. And the dogs cost a dollar. When I was feeling flush, I splurged on a hot sausage, which were fifty cents more.

Every cart had a Sabrett umbrella—as ubiquitous an emblem for New York hot dogs as the Vienna Beef sign is for Chicago. The weird name is meant to evoke a “little sabre.” (They couldn’t just call themselves Sabre because that name was claimed.) Oddly, the company began as a bakery, making hot dog buns. The actual hot dogs were a later innovation.

Kosher Dogs

Hot dogs were one of the foods my son and I could bond over when I was raising him in the aughts. Asher’s mother is Jewish and kept kosher, and I agreed that he would be raised with similar eating habits. That meant, when it came to hot dogs— every kid’s favorite food behind pizza—Hebrew National, the most famous kosher food brand in the nation. Hebrew National was founded in New York in 1905 and for many decades the meats were made here. Today, it’s owned by ConAgra Brands, and the hot dogs are made in Michigan, which feels wrong somehow.

Hebrew National were always the most expensive hot dogs in the supermarket. I grew up with Oscar Meier. In Wisconsin, you could by ten of those for two bucks. Hebrew National came in packages of seven, a very specific number that fascinated and confused my Midwestern brain, and made it difficult to match up the number of dogs and buns, which were sold in packages of eight.

I was very irked a few years back when Hebrew National quietly brought the hot dog content down to six links without telling anyone. Still, Asher insists they are the best store-bought hot dogs. He’s not wrong.

Adding Stamps to the Hot Dog Passport

Hot Dog Week here at the Mix will continue through Friday, with new post every day.

In the meantime, here’s a helpful guide to past hot dog coverage on The Mix, organized by state, so we may help you properly celebrate the week no matter where you live. You’ll notice there are no entries for Maryland and Rhode Island. We’re about to correct that!

CALIFORNIA

Pink’s Hot Dogs

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Ben’s Chili Bowl

ILLINOIS

Gene & Jude’s and here, too.

MASSACHUSETTS

George’s Coney Island, Worcester

Teo’s Hot Dogs, Pittsfield.

MICHIGAN

Lafayette Coney Island

NEW JERSEY