This NYT article identifies some of the best hot dogs in the NYC area.
I link to it, but provide some observations about Toronto street dogs, including one cart location you should stay away from -- oh, and one darkly amusing trip down memory lane.
First, the NYT story:
Let's define our terms. A kosher hot dog is all beef and made under rabbinical supervision. It is skinless or stuffed into collagen casings, because natural casings are not permitted. Hebrew National and Empire National are the kosher hot dogs most often found in delis and supermarkets. Hebrew National is better known, but Empire National is the best kosher hot dog I've found. It is meaty, garlicky and just salty enough. You can find it in New York at the Second Avenue Deli and at Ben's Best in Rego Park, Queens.
What I call kosher-style franks are also all beef with a lot of the same spices, but they have a natural casing, these days made from sheep's intestines. It is the natural casing that gives the best hot dogs their wondrous snap and bite.
Many hot dog lovers around the country love franks made with beef and pork, either stuffed into natural casings or skinless. I think they are mushy, soft and underseasoned, but Walter's, a beloved pagoda-shaped hot dog emporium in Mamaroneck in Westchester County, splits and grills a hot dog made from beef, pork and veal.
So what constitutes a great hot dog? To me, it's a grilled, kosher-style frank served on a lightly toasted bun with slightly spicy mustard and a homemade onion or pickle relish that is neither too sweet nor too hot. The Old Town Bar on East 18th Street not only toasts the bun that encases its grilled natural-casing all-beef Sabrett dog, it butters it as well. Sublime! Sauerkraut is also fine atop my dogs, though every once in a while I crave one prepared Southern style, with cole slaw. My ideal dog should fit neatly into its bun, sticking out by at most an inch on each end.
The New York-style hot dog I love has been around for well over a hundred years. According to Arthur Schwartz, author of "New York City Food" (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2004), in the 1870's a German immigrant named Charles Feltman opened his octagonal Ocean Pavilion beer garden on West 10th Street and Surf Avenue in Coney Island and sold frankfurters on buns by the thousands. Feltman had an employee, Nathan Handwerker, who, egged on by his famous friends Jimmy Durante and Eddie Cantor, opened a cheaper hot dog stand in 1916 that catered to the many poor and working-class people frequenting Coney Island.
Nathan's Famous hot dogs are still in Coney Island, but also in fast-food kiosks all over the country. The Nathan's in Coney Island still serves an excellent natural-casing all-beef hot dog. But it also makes a skinless all-beef dog that is a pale imitation of the real thing. These not-so-hot dogs are available in supermarkets, at many ballparks in the region and - gasp! - at some Nathan's franchises in the tristate area.
Papaya King has been serving its inexpensive yet exemplary natural-casing hot dogs since 1939, seven years after Gus Poulos, a Greek immigrant, opened Hawaiian Tropical Drinks at 86th Street and Third Avenue. The Gray's Papaya minichain was started by a former Papaya King partner in 1973. They each serve the Sabrett dog grilled, on a bun that isn't quite as toasted as I would like. I can't taste the extra spice in the Papaya King hot dog, but its mustard is spicier. Many other hot dog emporiums have opened with papaya in their name, and many of them, including Papaya Dog, serve the ubiquitous natural-casing Sabrett. ...
For wurst purists, Rolf Babiel serves a German-style beef-and-pork wiener made by Karl Ehmer on a crusty oblong roll with very fine German mustard at his Hallo Berlin cart at 54th Street and Fifth Avenue as well as at his Hell's Kitchen storefront on 10th Avenue. And The Patio, in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, near the United Nations, serves a fine natural-casing all-beef footlong in an excellent toasted bun. It makes for a classy alfresco eating experience. Skip the canned chili offered as a topping.
Classic New York delis have a long and proud hot-dog-serving tradition. Sure, Katz's, on East Houston Street, serves that same old dog, but its 100-year-old trick is to leave the franks on the grill long enough so that the exterior is nice and crisp and the interior stays juicy. Artie's, on the Upper West Side, has been around for only six years, but savvy eaters know its dogs, made by Golden D, are slightly spicier than the competition's, and just chewy enough. ...
Perhaps the most idiosyncratic version is the Italian hot dog served in and around Newark. At three places I visited, a quarter of a round, slightly crusty Italian bread was filled with Best brand skinless beef hot dogs and grilled or saut�ed peppers and onions, then improbably topped by rounds of fried potatoes. When they are made right, as they are at Tommy's Italian Sausage and Hot Dogs in Elizabeth, they are an irresistible version of meat and potatoes.
Though the kosher-style all-beef hot dog is ubiquitous in Gotham, many other styles have been imported. Colombian immigrants eat lucky dogs topped with cheese, pineapple, mustard, crumbled potato chips and Thousand Island dressing at Los Chuzos y Algo Mas on Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens. Enthusiasts for Chicago-style hot dogs can now sate their hunger at Shake Shack in Madison Square Park in Manhattan. It serves a classic Windy City dog, a steamed Vienna all-beef dog topped with diced tomatoes, mustard, onions, lettuce, green peppers, neon relish, cucumber, pickles, sport peppers and celery salt.
This article is, in some ways, a fantastic piece of journalism, in that it made me think about what constitutes a really great hot dog.
Toronto is blessed with hot dog carts downtown (unlike, say, an uncivilized burgh like Montreal :) ) , but finding a really flavourful weiner is not so easy to do.
Most talk of I've heard about hot dog carts downtown have focused on the range of toppings available. If that's the criteria, stay away from the cart at College and Bathurst. Its range is (and this is being charitable) minimal.
While a few carts tout brand names of weiners, most are generic.
What this article has inspired me to do is identify future hot dogs I consume as particularly good and then inquire as to the source of their weiners.
FWIW, I took a look at Chowhound's Toronto message board, and found this:
Subject: Steamies (Montreal style hot dog) From: flinghams@sympatico.ca (stewart) Posted: March 31, 2005 at 15:10:35
Message: |
Stumbled across this place today. |
Searching further, I did find a thread on Toronto Street dogs from November 2004.
Here is the answer on the origins of Toronto street dogs:
Subject: Re(1): street vendor hotdogs Name: Deco Posted: November 04, 2004 at 17:29:18 In Reply To: street vendor hotdogs Posted by littleparsnip on November 04, 2004 at 15:19:22
Message: |
It seems that what makes 'our' dogs unique is that they are NOT special at all! Nothing really sets any vendor in the city apart, some have more toppings than others, but they are nothing to write home about. If I'm not mistaken, every vendor must buy his product from the same wholesaler...gov't regulations, a la what will be known in history as the Frozen Sushi Battle O' 2004 |
So there you have it. We may well have no unique weiners in this city.
Now, I did promise a darkly amusing story. Here it is:
My brother and I came to Toronto in February 2000 for the memorial service of our maternal grandmother, which was held on a Saturday. My brother was skedded to fly out late Sunday. I was to leave Monday afternoon.
That left us some of Sunday to do the touristy stuff. We wanted to go up the CN tower, but balked at the cost.
Option 2 was to head to Kensington Market.
By the time we got to Spadina and Queen W., we were getting the growlies.
There can be a few stands working that corner, but we went to one facing Spadina, right beside the CIBC branch.
The guy running the stand looked a wee bit disreputable: Leafs ball cap, unkempt curly hair, demented eyes and a fixed leer.
We ordered two Polish sausages, which the guy promptly put on the grill.
Two more people show up: A nice, normal-looking couple, probably in their late 20s.
The guy orders a hotdog. The woman doesn't order anything.
The hot dog stand attendant speaks. He says: "Too bad you didn't want a sausage. I'd a given you a big one."
The implication was clear. :^)
After a few seconds, the male customer sputters, "What an asshole!" And the two walked off.
The attendant didn't look particularly disturbed by this.
As for me and the bro? Well, we would have walked off in disgust too, but our sausages were almost cooked and we were still hungry. :)