


But Handwerker wasn’t the first man hawking wieners in the neighborhood - he actually got his start working the grill for another immigrant, Charles Feltman of Frankfurt, Germany.Īs legend has it, Feltman brought the hot dog to Coney Island during the summer of 1867 as a way for beachgoers to enjoy sausages sans plates and silverware. First sold from his heated meat-pie cart, Feltman’s “Coney Island Red Hots” became popular and profitable enough for him to eventually open Feltman’s Ocean Pavilion, where seven grills (one of which was sometimes manned by Handwerker) would cook up to 40,000 hot dogs a day. He called them Nathan’s Famous Frankfurters, and over the next century, his encased meats became synonymous with Coney Island. Here are the best hot dogs from each of the 50 states.Beside the Brooklyn beach in 1916, a Polish immigrant named Nathan Handwerker began selling hot dogs from a building on Surf Avenue for a nickel apiece.
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Hot dogs are regional foods too, so we always had an eye towards those places that best represented local traditions.īut, even so, how to choose among the various styles in such diverse states as New Jersey, Connecticut, and California? With the help of some trusted sources, and hours spent on the road searching for holy-grail franks, we're ready to declare the best of the best. Are we limiting the search to emulsified all-beef or beef and pork? Should we include other meats such as elk or reindeer, or sausages styles like the Polish or bratwurst? We concluded that some really great stands had varieties, so places like Biker Jim’s in Denver and Jim’s Original in Chicago must be on the list. In order to narrow our search, my colleague, Hawk Krall, and I had to set some parameters. Inspiring such intense local pride, we know that compiling a list of the best dogs in each state is bound to ruffle some feathers. Instead, frankfurter culture remained rooted in local companies and institutions. From Rhode Island to Oklahoma, Greek stand owners loaded up their hot dogs with sauces that they labeled chili, Laced with spices from their native cuisine such as cinnamon and nutmeg, sometimes with paprika and hot pepper.īy 1900, hot dogs were everywhere, on the streets and in American pop culture. But despite the popularity of Oscar Meyer jingles in the 1950s, hot-dog chains never experienced the same type of scale and success as burger franchises. Between 18, about a half million Greeks arrived in the United States. Originally served on buns with only mustard and onions, the hot dog's DNA developed thanks to the innovation of immigrant communities. By the 1880s, what were once considered German sausages had become normalized-no longer called "Weisswursts, " but "red hots " or "hot dogs."

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It was an easy sell-Americans were proud carnivores from the start, and who could resist the smell of wieners and franks cooking on open grills in public places? Served from portable carts or stands, the hot dog, as it came to be known, was the first meat-based street food. Around 1850, Germans came in great numbers, introducing their expert sausage-making traditions. What is more American than hot dogs? Hamburgers, you say? Not if history is to be credited.īefore the cult of cheeseburgers took the nation by storm, hot dogs were the first and greatest democratic food. Hawk Krall ( is an illustrator and food writer from Philadelphia who spent three years as a hot-dog columnist for Serious Eats. Bruce Kraig is a professor and author of Hot Dog: A Global History.
