A field guide to the great hot dogs of America
Summer is high season for the hot dog, from backyard grills to ballparks to the finest roadside joints. Across the United States, hot dogs exhibit a striking diversity that reflects the microclimates in which they’ve evolved ever since the 1860s, when an entrepreneurial immigrant introduced the species from Germany. Here we take a wide-ranging, but admittedly inexhaustive, look at some of the varieties you may encounter in the wild.
New York dog
Natural habitat: The Big Apple.
Distinctive features: All beef, with sauerkraut and spicy brown mustard.
New York state is an epicenter of American hotdoggery, home to beloved hyperlocal wieners like Syracuse’s Snappy Grillers, micro-regional variants like the three-inchers of Troy, and destination footlongs like those grilled over coals at Ted’s in Buffalo. Still, New York City lays claim to the defining dogs: not the dirty-water type, but the kosher franks puckering on the griddles at Nathan’s Famous in Coney Island, pastrami-slinging delis and storefronts with “Papaya” in their names. Tomato-stained “onions in sauce” is a worthy condiment, but spicy brown mustard with either sauerkraut (for traditionalists) or relish (for swashbucklers) is the move. Tales are even told of those who take both.
Texas Tommy
Natural habitat: The Delaware Valley.
Distinctive features: Bacon and cheese.
In the grand tradition of misleading hot dog names, this mid-20th-century creation hails not from the Lone Star State but, reportedly, from Pottstown, Pa. It may have taken its name from a Ragtime dance that was as indecorous then as the topping combo may seem today. Now you can get one from Wilmington, Del. (at Johnnie’s Dog House & Chicken Shack, it’s bacon-wrapped in the original fashion), to Philadelphia (at Steve’s Prince of Steaks, you’ll find a split wiener topped with bacon strips and whiz). The region’s other contender, a fried fish cake on a dog, doesn’t stand a chance.
Slaw dog
Natural habitat: The South. Distinctive features: The slaw.
In West Virginia, which lays claim to masterminding the topping way back in the 1920s, it’s often paired with hot dog sauce (or, as some might identify it, chili). In North Carolina, it could come piled on an electric-red, locally revered Bright Leaf dog. The dog is nearly vermilion at Nu-way Weiners, a Macon, Ga., destination since 1916, where the slaw atop the chili is cold, creamy and finely chopped. So, too, is the topping at the Varsity in Atlanta, where it’s a valid move to skip the chili and order an all-beef frank crowned with just slaw.
Puerto Rican-style dog
Natural habitat: The island’s many stands and carts.
Distinctive features: No topping spared.
Puerto Rico is rich with carts selling hot dogs adorned in the Boricua style. These low-key setups belie the joys of this frank, which is decked out with some version of virtually every standard topping: Squirts of mustard, ketchup and cheese sauce join forces with layers of sauerkraut, onions and carne molida (ground beef cooked with sofrito that plays the role of chili). Finally, there are crunchy potato sticks, the crown that turns this variety into dog royalty.
The Sonoran
Natural habitat: Arizona in general, Tucson in particular.
Distinctive features: The best kind of fusion.
The name nods to the leading theory of its provenance: Sonora, the Mexican state just across the border. But spend enough time in metro Phoenix or Tucson and you’ll see that this extravagant dog is Arizonan to the core. The “dogueros” who operate the mobile outfits (like El Sabroso in Phoenix) and griddles (Los Chipilones in Tucson) don’t hold back. In a roll that clocks in somewhere between bolillo and bun, there are pinto beans, diced tomatoes and onions, as well as stripes of mustard, drizzles of green salsa and squiggles of mayo. Under there somewhere is a hot dog wrapped in bacon and on the side, a little gift — a couple of charred yellow chiles.
New York System
Natural habitat: Rhode Island.
Distinctive features: Meat sauce, strict parameters and a touch of flair.
Don’t let the “New York” fool you — these are pure Rhode Island, and rival Chicago dogs in their particularity. The midcentury brainchild of the Original New York System restaurant, they are also called hot wieners, gaggers and Greek lobsters, though never hot dogs. At places that carry on the tradition, staffers deftly prepare them “on the arm,” lining up steamed, slightly sweet buns from Homestead Baking Co. on their forearms and filling them with wieners made from veal, beef and pork. They are then dressed with mustard, “meat sauce” (what an outsider might call chili), raw onions and a flurry of celery salt. That’s “all the way,” and with a glass of coffee milk on the side, it’s the only way.
Chicago dog
Natural habitat: The Windy City and its environs.
Distinctive features: “The garden.”
Regional hot dog tradition at its most precise, the Chicago dog is an improbable masterpiece, whether you’re peacefully taking down a boiled version at Superdawg Drive-in or ordering a char dog while you get roasted by the staff at the Wiener’s Circle. It’s “dragged through the garden,” which means topped with exactly seven items that doting partisans can rattle off without hesitation: yellow mustard, relish (customarily a neon green), chopped white onions, tomato slices, a pickle spear, pickled sport peppers and celery salt. The foundation beneath is also imperative: a natural casing, all beef (nearly always from the local wiener maestros at Vienna Beef ), tucked inside a poppy-seed bun.
Half Smoke
Natural habitat: Washington, D.C.
Distinctive features: A special sausage.
Underneath the blanket of saucy chili and beyond the chopped onions and yellow mustard that are vital to a Half Smoke served “all the way” is the signature sausage that defines this capital classic. While the smoky, slightly spicy pork-and-beef links were invented as breakfast fare at the Weenie Beenie, they are now available at establishments throughout the city. But no purveyor is more famous than Ben’s Chili Bowl, the U Street monument to meat. Technically, its Half Smoke is more sausage than hot dog, but it’s so good that we don’t care.
Cheese Coney
Natural habitat: The chili parlors of Cincinnati.
Distinctive features: The city’s famous (or infamous) chili.
This Midwestern standout wields a familiar trinity: chopped onion, a stripe of mustard, a sauce of finely ground beef. But it is then topped with a prodigal pile of shredded Cheddar. Adherents who haunt parlors like Skyline and Camp Washington scoff at the it’s-not-chili complaints, celebrating the sauce’s distinctive spicing of nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon — and the miraculous merging of Mediterranean and Slavic flavors with early-20th-century American tastes. That said, they also take theirs on spaghetti, so the jury’s still out.
Coneys
Natural habitat: Michigan. Distinctive features: Not just another chili dog with mustard and raw white onion.
Coney Island is the name for the dogs, the whole category of restaurants that sell them, and the place that inspired their originator, a Greek immigrant (either Gust Keros or George Todoroff, depending on whom you ask) who passed through the hot dog hub of New York City on his way west. Michiganders differ, with Midwestern politeness, over Coney particulars: In Detroit, the Coney sauce at the stalwarts American Coney Island and Lafayette Coney Island has a fluidity that makes staining your shirt inevitable. In Flint, locals call the sauce “dry” as a compliment, while the city of Jackson has its own variation, with differences so subtle they’re nearly undetectable by outsiders. Most everyone seems to agree on the supremacy of Koegel’s brand dogs and the necessity of beef heart in the chili.
Bologna dog
Natural habitat: The Jewish delis of Baltimore
Distinctive features: Beef two ways.
The heyday of Baltimore’s Jewish delis has passed, but the legacy lives on, at least at Attman’s Deli, one of the last vestiges of East Lombard Street’s Corned Beef Row, and the Essen Room in nearby Pikesville. Both still offer the duet of emulsified meats that’s become known as Baltimore’s hot dog. Slices of griddled beef bologna on an all-beef frank is a textural lark and, as beloved local historian Gilbert Sandler noted, “grease from the bologna mixes with the grease from the hot dog, and both find their way into the bread.” What sounds like redundancy is actually profundity.
Reindeer dog
Natural habitat: Alaska Distinctive features: A delicately gamy link, Coca-cola onions.
In 1892, Capt. Michael Healy brought back the first reindeer from Siberia as a new food source for hungry Alaskans. That same summer, Nathan Handwerker (the founder of Nathan’s Famous) was born. Coincidence? Well, yes. All the same, today Alaska’s on-a-bun benefaction is a dog made with lean, delicately gamy reindeer. The consummate rendition comes from Yeti Dogs in Anchorage, where the link teams up with another Alaskan hot dog tradition: sautéed onions spiked with Coca-cola.