munch
The portly fellow in the newsboy cap squeezes into a small chair at a metal table, with a bounty of tubular meats and fried potatoes before him. A broad smile unfolds on his face.
He lifts a naturally cased wienerwurst, ensconced in a fresh and pillowy bun and lathered in a housemade chili and an aged Cheddar sauce, to his mush.
A bite.
There is a deep exhale of relief as a moment of ecstasy slowly washes over him, followed by a wry grin of satisfaction.
“The hot dog might be the most perfect food ever invented,” he says without a trace of irony.
And thus, arguably the region’s foremost frankfurter fanatic (not named Rick Sebak) was formally introduced to the fare at Frankie Bunz, a brand new hot dog shop on Murray Avenue in Squirrel Hill.
There is a popular meme these days that begins “find someone who looks at me the way …” with the sentence to be concluded with something along the lines of “the way Tormund looks at Brienne” in “Game of Thrones” or “Jackson Maine looks at Ally” in “A Star Is Born.”
One could do a lot worse than to find a soulmate that looks at you the way PostGazette breaking news editor Anthony Conroy looks at hot dogs. This is not to pick on the dear Connie, as the same could be about this husky scrivener in regards to ribs or pasta. But, he could easily meat — er, meet — the legal standard to be an expert witness on the subject in this or any other state.
Last July, at his suggestion, we set about to consume a dozen of the region’s best hot dogs in a single day. Reasonably pacing ourselves, we made it to eight of them before the limits of actual physical pain set in.
I had not eaten a single hot dog since. Naturally, I tapped the Dean of the Dogs to help me break this 11-month fast at Frankie Bunz. Eric Feldman and David Faigen, a pair of friendly neighborhood natives and Allderdice alumni and restaurant and beverage industry veterans, opened it just this month in a small space next to Aiello’s that quite ironically was most recently a green juice shop.
They traded in the juice for more than a dozen varieties of craft pop, fresh-cut fries, a daily grilled cheese special and 10 dogs that comprise a menu that is littered with clever pop culture references, mostly from gangster movies like “The Godfather.”
To wit: the Sonny Special, named after the bullet-riddled Sonny Corleone, has Swiss cheese and “lots” of ketchup ($5); Fredo’s Frank is made of chicken and turkey ($4.25); and the Hyman Roth, naturally,