Buddies and Hot Dogs

Guess My Celebrity Dad

2012-01-25T20:55:00.000-08:00

Buddy Northcutt and I rolled out to Los Angeles this weekend to see some family and friends and do a little Frank business. We accomplished everything famously and thanks to said family and friends we had a great time between all the hot dog talk. Maybe the most enjoyable part of the trip was the downtown bar tour orchestrated by buddies Kent, Fieron and Nathan. We started off by hitting Cole's for some sustenance before the real business started. Classic French Dip. Super tasty.

Cole's is also home to The Varnish where I had this refreshing concoction called "The Fairbanks" It was Bulleit Rye and apricot, a giant ice cube and other fancy hoo ha I don't remember.

Around the halfway point of the evening we ended up at the lovely Jessica's bar, The Falls Lounge. After a couple PBR's and shots Fieron pointed at Nathan and said to me "We're gonna play guess my celebrity dad."

Me: "Ron Moranis!"

Fieron: "You mean Rick Moranis. No. Try again"

Me: (Second guess fell victim to a possible black out )

Fieron: "No. Try again"

Me: "Luke Skywalker!"

Fieron: "Bingo!"

(I paraphrased some of that shit because I really don't remember exactly how that all went down.)

Flash forward a couple hours, Jessica is still pouring the whisky and PBR's and the buddies tell me that Nathan really is Luke Skywalker's son. And to clarify were talking about Mark Hamill and not the 2 Live Crew here. Nathan's a pretty rad and funny fella. If you meet him ask him about a bulldog in a bed and a girl in a closet. Definitely a new buddy. Suck on that Star Wars nerds, a 10 hour bender with Luke Skywalker's kid.

But that was just Saturday. Sunday was we got into the dogs. First off we hit Berlin Currywurst. Met the owners who moved to LA from Berlin to open up shop. I maybe even impressed them with my Currywurst knowledge and that I had eaten my weight in it on multiple trips to their homeland. Their set up was simple. You picked the sausage, the heat level and the sauce. Completely authentic and just like the wurst karts in Hamburg. We pulled three varieties, Bockwurst with traditional curry sauce, Bratwurst with ginger orange Charlottenberg and Paprikawurst with Mitte which was a lemon garlic spiced sauce. Super good folks doing a cool thing. Make sure you go check it out.

Next on the agenda was checking out buddy Tyler's Handsome Coffee lab which happened to be across the street from Wurst Kuche. Due to being stuffed from Berlin Currywurst we had a couple coldies there and caught up with TJ before scooting off to watch the Lakers choke in the last 2 min of the game. Ol' WK has been chronicled here a couple times so I won't waste your peepers on it again.

We capped the night at Dog Haus in Old Pasadena. This place was a real treat and we weren't even hammered. Really good, fat beef dogs dressed up in a bunch of creative ways like we like. Lots of options but NCT and I went for the gusto pulling in The Little Leaguer and The Grand Slam respectively.

Grand Slam, smoked bacon, tater tots and a fried egg:

Danny smoochin his chili cheese frito pie dog.

Whirlwind dog trip but it was a gooder. We'll be back LA.

p.s. do all flights look like this? :

Rosamunde Sausage Grill. San Francisco, CA.

2012-01-20T12:42:00.000-08:00

Following in the footsteps of our good buddy and certified "tube dude" Geoff, I checked out Rosamunde Sausage Grill in San Francisco. I was new to the city, a real Johnny Come Lately, lil' kid new boots fresh off the highway with nothing but an unkempt beard a maniacal craving for encased meats. This joint does not disappoint, buddies.

I wrapped my meat hooks around the Weisswurst. A veal, onion and leak masterpiece recommended by the gent working the counter. He told me to put ketchup on it. My reply? "No dice newb." The dog was a flavorful taste explosion, accessorized with kraut, some spicy peppers and stone ground mustard. The real winner at Rosamunde is the grilled french roll. The perfect amount of resistance before busting the seams on a delicious dog.

That's a good looking sausage right there.

My pal Erin rolled with the Chicken Cherry. She let me nibble off the tip. I'm not a fan of chicken sausages, but this one had a nice bite with a clean, sweet finish. The kraut plussed up the sour. All in all? Not too fucking shabby.

Here's Erin deep-throating a quality dog. Her thoughts? "Shit is good, man." 'Nuff said.

Puka Dog!

2011-12-23T21:17:00.000-08:00

Fact: Buddies will go to great lengths to track down the best dogs out there. I'm no exception and this entry here took me to the Hawaiian Islands with an additional flight to hop from Maui to Oahu to make sure I didn't miss the culinary marvel that is the Puka Dog.

But first before we get to the Puka I had a couple other dog encounters on this island of pork lovers that I'll tell ya about. First was this lonely li'l fella at the Komoda Store & Bakery in Makawao.

This dag had a strange mayo/mustard on it. Not the best dog I ever had but I felt obliged to give it a home. I suggest you stick to the badass pastries like the guava filled doughnuts they make daily.

Next up outside the Whalers Village Museum there was a place selling Hula Maid Pineapple Dogs. Couldn't pass that up. This was a perfectly fine dog. A little sweet and a nice snap. Nothing you have to seek out but if you find yourself in Hawaii and see a place selling them you might as well get into it.

The next thing I stumbled on was how Hawaiian's will stick anything on sticky rice and wrap it with seaweed, even hot dogs. It's called Musubi.

Spam Musubi and Spam in general are also very popular as proven in this beautiful pic.

But my favorite thing was Longanisa Musubi. Even better I ate this sucker on a 10,023 ft volcano called Haleakala

But as mentioned in the first part of this post, the main thing I was looking forward to on this trip was Puka Dog

We spent most of the day at the Pearl Harbor memorial and ended up hitting rush hour to get across town to the Puka spot. While Maui is mainly two lane, slow pace roads, Oahu was like being in fucking Dallas. If you've ever been to Dallas you know that equals S-U-C-K. There was even a moment when we wondered if we could actually make it and get back to the airport to fly back to Maui. Things got tense buddies but I put the pedal to the metal and made it happen.

The Puka spears that toast the inside of the bun.

The multitude of condiments

We both went for the Polish with Yancy picking pineapple relish, mild lemon garlic and lilikoi mustard. I got hot lemon garlic sauce, banana relish and guava mustard.

It was worth the trek hombres. Oh and Maui is super awesome too.

"What The Fuck Kinda Question Is That?"

2011-07-28T21:52:00.000-07:00

This story is a stop on my latest travels which took me back to Chicago and then on to San Francisco. Two of my favorite cities where I put down a multitude of pork related items. I'll break this globe trot into a coupla posts.

Let me start by saying "God Bless The Wiener's Circle." It's not because I had a staggeringly great dog, or that it had some kind of glorious dining space. It was because that's how they answered my question.

Back up to 12 in the AM and buddies Farley Bookout, Steve Walters, Jay Ryan and Bobby Dixon and myself are leaving Pitchfork and heading home. I says "we should get a dog." Farley says "Again?" So I whipped out my trusty internet portal and looked up hot dog joints. Lookee there, The Wiener's Circle is on the way. Jay says "Call and see if they are open"

Ring, Ring:

WC: "Yeah"
Me: "Hi, what time do you close?"
WC: "What The Fuck Kinda Question Is That?" "5AM Motherfucker!" "Fuck You Bitch!" *click*
Me: "We're going to The Wiener's Circle."

As soon as I got off the phone it dawned on me where we were heading. The hot dog place most famous for cussin' your ass for anything and nothing. At midnight it was pretty packed but they were moving people through the line quicklike. I stepped up ready to order a red hot and a double char wondering if I'd get cussed. "Which char motherfucker?" I got cussed, again. I got off way easier than the gal behind me who tried to pay with a credit card. "Cash only bitch! Cash only motherfucker!" as they shooed her away from the window flappin' a towel. That's also all the time they needed to toss my order in the window zippity-doo.

A Vienna red hot and a double chardog with the works:

This was on the counter. You bet your sweet ass I put money towards the cause.

'Merica Dogs.

2011-07-17T13:33:00.001-07:00

Let me start this post by saying it's a damn crying shame that my good buddy Josh Kaulius hasn't graced the pages of Buddies & Hotdogs yet. The dude is a prime candidate for the Meat Sweat Hall of Fame. I've seen this guy curl up on a barroom bathroom floor after going into some weird esophagus shock caused by eating too many hot wings. He was escorted out of the place and sent directly to the hospital. Now that's commitment.

On the 4th of July, Josh and I got together for a little lonely, sad dude pity party. We cured our our ills by way of grills. We stuffed our faces and drank the blues away with a hand selected assortment of high-octane IPA's. We laughed. We watched a few episodes of Pawn Stars. We made fun of people. We listened to Outlaw Country. It was a real, real nice day. 'Merican style.

Here's Josh making a mockery of the all-beef frank. He puts ketchup on his. Gross. **Editor's Note: Josh claims this wasn't ketchup, but rather BBQ sauce, sriracha, or some chipotle tabasco type sauce. His credibility has since been restored.

A nice little close-up.

The bountiful harvest includes terriyaki marinated pork loin (personal recipe), steak filets, shrimp and bacon wrapped jalapeno skewers (personal recipe), and some delicious all-beef dogs that didn't make it into this picture. 'Merica. Fuck yeah.

Dog in the Park. Seattle's Finest.

2011-05-16T09:35:00.000-07:00

I've made the pilgrimage to mecca, and it happens to be smack-dab in the middle of downtown Seattle. Dog in the Park serves the best hot dog in Seattle proper. This my friends, I assure you.

The owner is this Greek dude. I can't remember his name for the life of me, but he was super friendly and talkative. It made the experience of standing in line so much more pleasant. He recognized me as a bona fide Tube Dude in seconds flat.

Dog in the Park is nestled downtown in Westlake Park. It's kind of a weird location. One part stand, one part brick and mortar store front. There's a couple of picnic tables to sit on, but most everybody was grabbing a dog to go while on their lunch break.

The menu consists of pretty standard fare. The magic comes with the preparation. Here are the options:

All-Beef.
Kosher All-Beef.
Polish Sausage.
Louisiana Sausage.
Chicken spinach feta Sausage.
Chili cheese dog.
Turkey dog.

I went with the standard All-Beef. For only $3.25, that's a real lunch time bargain for Seattle. I had two and was more than stuffed.

World-class all-beef franks, split down the middle and grilled to perfection. Crispy, toasted buns. Grilled onions and cabbage provide just the right amount of crunch. Cabbage you say? Yep, and I ain't talking slaw. Big leafy pieces of cabbage grilled up on the flat iron. Delicious.

None other than The Schneids getting neck deep on Dog in the Park's famous All-Beef.

The flat iron. Simple and efficient. The perfect tool for a seasoned meat wrangler.

Round 2! The Schneids wouldn't get his meat hooks out of the way for this shot. He was holding on for dear life.

It's been a while since I've had my mug grace a post. I took this one myself because The Schneids' mitts were covered in mustard, onions and cabbage remnants.

Dog in the Park is in my opinion the best dog I've had in Seattle. They've managed to master simplicity, which I find some of the gourmet joints frequently skimp on. You can't beat the price and the great service either.

Just so he doesn't cry about it, I have to give props to my buddy Dru for this find.

The Schneids vs. Oki Dog.

2011-04-25T14:51:00.001-07:00

On a recent production trip in Los Angeles, good buddy The Schneids and I wanted to stuff our jowls with some world class dogs. We decided to give a place called The Stand a try, after an afternoon trip to Amoeba Records.

There were a few problems with this plan. First, The Stand was a good 45 minutes away from Hollywood. Why is that a problem you ask? Well, The Schneids was driving, and if you've ever sat passenger in a car driven by The Schneids, you know just how excruciating that experience can be. The man slows down for green lights, and never tops 40 miles an hour. He can't park to save his life, and he is slightly directionally challenged. I have very little patience for terrible drivers, and while The Schneids is one of my ace number one pals, that vein on my forehead was doing one armed push-ups.

So after hitting every light in Los Angeles proper, we found ourselves in a strange corporate office park not too far from Beverly Hills. This didn't seem right. We parked the car in an underground ramp and proceeded to take 3 sets of escalators up to an open area with a huge fountain. A security guard looked at us a bit bewildered. We were basically in a office building lobby on a Sunday looking for a hotdog. "We're closed today guys, sorry."

I looked at The Schneids. His lower lip was trembling under his beard. His eyes were filling with blood-red rage. His ears emitted thin wisps of shit-hot steam. His fists clenched in that "Smash! Destroy!" sort of way. This was bad.

Quick, we need a back-up plan STAT! The Schneids went from hungry for hotdogs to having a full on appetite for destruction.

I remembered that buddy Geoff recommended Oki Dog, the legendary punk hangout. It was way back towards Hollywood on Fairfax. Could I stand another 45 minutes in the car with The Schneids behind the wheel? There was no time to think.

Introducing Oki Dog. Bar none the most disgusting restaurant I've ever eaten at. Not only were there geriatric Aryan Brotherhood guys playing arcade games, but the building itself was seemingly held together by chicken wire and cockroach carcasses. There were more washed out prison tats then napkins in this joint.

The Schneids was one step away from having a nervous breakdown upon arrival. We had to walk a block to the cash machine which only ignited his fury.

The menu board. Complete with boogers, smeared blood, sun-dried chili cheese, and anaerobic flagellated protozoan parasites.

I'll have one Oki Dog please!

Here's The Schneids wondering what he could craft into a shank if the shit got ugly. Still shaking with rage.

I ordered the Oki Dog and the lady boy working behind the counter was nice enough to give us a huge basket of fries. The guts of the Oki Dog are infamous:

1 tortilla.
2 hot dogs.
Copious piles of pastrami.
Chili.
Cheese.

Like a baby with a bottle, The Schneids quelled his blood lust for a bite of this harbinger of bowel havoc. His thoughts? "It's good." 'Nuff said.

Behold, the innards of the most intestinally compromising food stuffs known to man. It took me 4 days to sweat the salts out of my body after eating this petri dish of nitrates and fly shit.

The Schneids had to jump on a plane immediately after we ate. I said a little prayer for the passengers of that fateful flight. There is no vacuum toilet sturdy enough for that type of industrial level gastrointestinal emission. Godspeed.

All in all, the actual Oki Dog was pretty damn good. That said, I wouldn't step foot into this restaurant after dark, with a girl, or without packing some serious weapons grade giardia meds.

A Li'l Local Flavor

2011-03-25T22:09:00.000-07:00

This is gonna sound like I'm a total dick. When people ask me why I opened Frank the true story is buddy Northcutt and I were bitching about Austin's lack of a good dog. The year we first said "we should open a fucking hot dog joint" Sonic tied for best hot dog in town. No...Shit...Chet. So as much as we wanted Austin to have a really awesome dog like we got in Chicago or NYC no place really delivered besides a cart called Chris' Little Chicago (Sadly closed down right now)

Most places simply sucked. So we opened a joint and it's pretty dang good. But it's also been a year and a half now, pushing into two. So I thought I'd venture about town and see if anyone kicked it up.

First stop was Mighty Fine. It's a burger spot run by the Rudy's BBQ folks. Rudy's is one of the better BBQ gettin places inside the city limits so I was hoping for good things. They offer a "chopped dog," ok, I'm intrigued. But alas that intrigue only lasted until the dog hit the table.

I can't bitch that it was false advertising because it is as advertised, a regular ol' wiener, chopped up, loaded in a bun and covered in chili. Considering how tasty Rudy's is I would have hoped for chili with a little more kick in the ass and they shoulda used 6 to 1 dogs instead of 8 to 1 to fill that bun hon. If they had offered beanie weenie in a bun, that woulda excited me.

Speaking of Chili with a kick in the ass. The day before South by Southwest geared up buddies Andy Vastagh from Boss Construction and Clay Hayes from Gigposters.com hit the Texas Chili Parlor with the li'l missus and myself. You celluloid buffs may have seen parts of the Parlor in the Death Proof part of Grindhouse.

We've been going here for 15 years or so and I've never looked past the burgers and chili. Mainly because the chili is made with hunks of meat not ground beef and it's badass. They serve Fritos as sides so I rock a Frito chili pie burger always. Well this time I decided to see if they had a dog on the menu. Fuckin' A they did. And they also had a pork loin, green chili and white bean chili on that thing too. I mixed that shit up. Half XX red and half white pork covered in Fritos, sour cream, cheese and relish. Even though we were a few coldies in at this point and this is a shit pic, that was a deelish dog right there fellas.

I decided to bookend this exceptional Parlor dog with another average dag. This trip was essentially the same as being a block away from Taco Bell at 2:45 AM and making the call to hit the drive through. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Ladies and Gents Der Wienerschnitzel...

I honestly didn't know we had one in Austin. Seems they belong somewhere else. Kinda like In and Out Burger should only be in California, Der Wienerschnitzel feels like that too. Don't get me wrong, I ain't baggin' on the Schnitzel being in town it just surprised me. One of my favorite bands, The Descendants, sing about it so it's historical relevance in pop and tubed meat culture makes it gold in my book.

Hit this place with buddy Lenny and the dogs were as expected, fast food dogs, fast food taste. They are trying to hip it up a bit with the "limited time only bacon wrapped street dog." I'm no dummy, I bought one. And a chili cheese with a side of chili cheese fries. Like I said when it was over I had that same feeling as the morning after the Taco Bell drive by after a night of Wizard Party. Not so hot.

Diggity Dog Hot Dog and Sausage Co. Seattle.

2011-03-21T21:32:00.000-07:00

Real hot dog connoisseurs don't just simply survey the scene from afar. Nope, certified tube dudes like me need to get their sweaty jowls within sniffin' distance of encased all-beef. Spies like us need the steam of a wiener bath to totally envelope our senses. To tickle our ivories, so to speak. So one Saturday afternoon I took my boo out with me on a bona fide beef frank bounty. The results were less then fantastic, but you wouldn't be shit for a power hitter if you didn't swing for the fences and miss every once in a while.

Introducing Diggity Dog in the Tangle Town neighborhood of Seattle. The definition of a mediocre hot dog establishment.

I ordered the Alabama Dog, and the little lady went with a naked Italian sausage (she's still learning).

The Alabama Dog featured slaw, chili and onions. Nothing really spectacular about the first bite, and the bun was the best thing about it.

A mediocre dog is still a hot dog. Down the hatch!

The lady wasn't complaining. Nom nom nom.

All-in-all, Diggity Dog was like an early 80's Deep Purple album. The album art had so much promise, but then it just went south when the keytars came out. Can't win 'em all.

International Report: "Hot Dogs" Cozumel, Mexico

2011-03-11T14:01:00.000-08:00

I've always associated these things with Mexico: tacos, marijuana, beheadings, Cortez the killer, spring break nymphs, illegal immigrants, and one of the world's most depressing monetary units, the peso. While that's a mostly accurate picture, it's not quite a complete one. They have hot dogs, too! And they're pretty damn good.

This was a special hot dog adventure. Two of the founding buddies of buddies and hot dogs were able to take it together. We presented ourselves to the exotic island inhabitants as "The Radical Bros." Rick and Dale Radical--extreme adventurers to the max. We snorkeled, swam, boogie boarded, drove pink volkswagens, played Quiddler, ate, wore sandals, and drank with maximum gusto. All out, all the time. Even walking was executed with an agro edge. Fortunately no one was hurt. Except for some wicked sunburns. (Which eventually turned into savage tans anyway.)

On the eve of our hot dog cart dining, I came down with a particularly challenging case of gastrointestinal distress. The kind where you set up shop in the bathroom and hang up your favorite pictures and take your shirt off for a while. But I was not going to be defeated. Nothing gets in the way of me and bacon wrapped Mexican hot dogs.

The keepers of the cart were quite nice. They let us goof around, stand behind the cart, throw down a chicken dance or two. The dogs were surprisingly awesome. The buns were soft and crumbly and unnaturally yellow (not sure what causes that-food coloring?) The dogs, I imagine, were of the cheaper Bimbo brand variety, which can be just fine every once in a while. The bacon they wrapped around them had a nice char on it. The onions were diced to a fine wet fluff. The ketchup was sweet, fresh, and bold. KETCHUP, you say, dear reader. Yes, ketchup. The scarlet letter of condiments actually, somehow, was perfect. Now let us never speak of ketchup on dogs ever again.

Down and out in Mexico-land. Wish I was there right now. I've always felt quite comfortable sitting on curbs.

A big thanks to the lovely Cha Cha for her insider hot dog cart knowledge and all around awesomeness.

Get Your Kicks On Route 66

2011-03-07T21:57:00.000-08:00

Buddies I hit the road again and this time I ended up on a desolate section of Route 66 outside of Oklahoma City. Not much out there but this joint Pop's in Arcadia. It's a pretty big place and it's so flat out there that this building and 66 foot tall soda bottle jut right out of the landscape like a spaceship in the middle of nowhere.

If you are into soda this place will fluff your pillow. Hundreds of varieties from all over the world. Arranged by flavor in the coolers and by colour on the floor to ceiling shelves that line all the windows.

One of four walls this size

We stopped in to pick up some sodas but what the hey, they had dogs so we decided to partake.

I went with the Pop's “ripper” a 1/4 lb, deep fried all beef dog with kraut, jalapenos, and cheddar, on a poppy seed bun.

The missus went with the standard 1/4 lb chili dog. Paired mine up with an Avery's peach sody and a side of whole fried okra.

And since they had an assload of sodas we brought a mixed case home. Here's some of the haul

Wish this spot was around the corner from the pad.

While we were in OKC we hit the usual haunts of Coit's and Johnnie's. You've seen me write about them before but here's a little visual refresh:

Coit's

Johnnie's

Them's some good dags...

International Report II: JAPADOG!

2011-02-13T16:46:00.000-08:00

Vancouver is a strange city, totally mixed up in what it is-Asia, Canada, Amsterdam? So it makes absolute sense then that a place like Japadog would exist here. What is it? I dunno. Is it Japanese food? Is it a hot dog? Who cares, just eat it already. Japadog is a straight up conundrum. Let it be. What if you found out Bigfoot wasn’t actually a mythic beast but was just some strange hairy dude. You might be disappointed that the mystery, the value we’ve invested in Bigfoot, the wicked riffs he’s inspired, the sweet van art, those rad “In Search of…” documentaries would lose their cultural weight and all those wonderful things you loved would turn to shit. Anyway, Japadog is good as hell. And Japadog is odd. It’s on a block with a great smelling noodle bowl place, and then this other totally strange shop called BEARD POPPA’S that sells these puffy pastries filled with cream. I love fake Japan block, it’s very awesome. I’d been holding Japadog out to Peveto like a carrot, kept saying I was gonna go, but shit kept getting in the way. Finally, my buddy Coggins and I headed over there for a quick bite. Coggins is the king, check out the mini truck! Complete with Mexican blanket upholstery and black metal soundtrack. Again, Vancouver = anomaly. Trve Kvlt Mini truck?

So Japadog is world famous because the dude who started it got all these photo endorsements by tons of famous people like that governor of California who came back in time to kill us all, and some other dudes who do some things that have absolutely no bearing on my life whatsoever. So, Japadog is kinda popular. The place was packed when we went, tons of people (ok, the place only seats 20), Japanese tourists and regular downtown folk alike. They have some signature dogs, which are really brats versus the traditional frank, but like, why the fuck would you expect tradition next to a place like BEARD POPPA’S? That place is a mystery, or in fake Japanese, MYSTERYU. Japadog’s basically what you’d expect though: a brat on a bun, with like, wasabi mayo or shredded daikon and bonito flakes on it. It really does sound stranger than it is, though. We tried 2 each, the Terimayo (beef teriyaki with shredded cabbage & wasabi mayo) and the Oroshi (the brat I mentioned with the chilled daikon and green onions), added some chili garlic french fries, and got pretty stuffed. They also have like, a wagyu beef one or something.

Look at Coggins wolfin’ that shit down.

I would have ordered the Love Meat, but I just wasn’t in the frame of mind to tell the petite and super polite Japanese girl behind the counter I wanted LOVE MEAT.

Japadog is good, pretty cheap, and a little strange. I’ll totally eat there again, though and this time I’ll stop by FUCKING BEARD POPPA’S. I just found another place here the other day that I need to go check out, we’ll see if takes me a year to do it and report on it like with Japadog.

Hot Dog Showdown!

2011-02-01T21:58:00.000-08:00

This is big news people. Serious Eats and Everyday with Rachael Ray combined forces to create the ultimate Hot Dog bracket. 64 hot dog joints from around the country are going to square off to find the true champion.

Now, I'm known to boycott just about everything Rachael Ray gets her chubby little mitts on, but this is about hot dogs people. Everybody knows that Superbeast holds hot dogs in high order.

We've got a lot of friends on this list. Most importantly:

Our favorite dudes from Frank in Austin Texas.
Hot Doug's in Chicago.
Monster Dogs and Po Dogs in Seattle.
And last but not least the venerable Wienery in Minneapolis.

My money is on a Frank/Hot Doug's showdown for the ages. Then the world will explode and all that will remain is that weird neon green relish. May the best dog win!

** Jake are you telling me that there is a new hot dog bus in Minneapolis that serves gourmet dogs and you haven't reported on it yet? WTF man!

Dog Town. Santa Monica.

2011-01-18T20:10:00.000-08:00

Good buddy Mr. Todd snapped this gut buster while on production in LA. Here's what he had to say:

Thought you'd enjoy this. Lunch from the Dog Town truck today in Santa Monica. Beef dog, wrapped in bacon, topped with fresh salsa and deep fried jalapeños. With a side of nacho cheese tater tots... Amazing.

Amazing indeed, my friend.

The Slaw Dogs

2010-12-09T19:48:00.000-08:00

City of Angels part two yinz. Well Pasadena actually. I was out there for about a week and managed to eat a few dogs so here's what's happening over at The Slaw Dogs

Pretty new place but they are serving it up ok. They offer to "rippered" or char broil your dog and a lot of their customs look mighty fine. They will even cut up any sausage you want and throw it on one of their salads in case you want to eat healthy but still get your pork on.

I went for a build your own and their standard slaw dog. Looking back on the menu I may have screwed the pooch by passing up the TNT Super Dog, a 10" rippered dog, chili, cheese, bacon, pastrami, fries, & grilled onion, wrapped in giant tortilla with a fried egg upon request(!!!), but my picks were proper.

On the left a rippered dog with guacamole and jalapeno bacon. On the right "The Original" chili, cheese, mustard, onions, cole slaw both flanking a delicious PBR tall boy.

A well rounded meal buddies, veggies, bacon and brew. The way baby Jesus intended.

P.S. For Brewer:

I hit Wurstkuche and rustled up the Duck, Bacon & Jalapeño with sweet and hot peppers and a Rattlesnake, Rabbit & Jalapeño with kraut. Side of truffle oil fries and some Belgian suds to chase it all. Pretty good but those tools need to mix up their toppings.

Oki Dog

2010-12-06T22:49:00.000-08:00

I just had four wisdom teeth pulled, I'm hopped up on vicodin, can only eat soup so obviously all this is making me hungry. What's the most logical distraction? I should write about hot dogs.

A couple weeks ago I was in LA and wanted to get to Oki Dog as this one had been on the list for a li'l bit. Not to be confused with Oki's Dog on Pico. This is the original one in Hollywood where 80's era punks used to hang out. Shawn Kerri (illustrator of many Circle Jerks and Germs images as well as one of the few female illustrators forCARtoons Magazine) drew this action:

Now if you were a person who pays attention to Yelp you'd probably stay the hell away from Oki Dog based on the reviews. Well buddies let me tell you those reviews were written by tasteless idiots and pussies. Yeah it's a little sketchy, maybe not 100% "family friendly" and possibly a little dirty but it was all delicious and didn't intimidate my ironclad constitution one bit.

There are a mess of things on the Oki Dog menu but I had a singular quest and that was for the "World Famous Oki Dog" Two franks, chili, cheese, and pastrami all wrapped up in a tortilla. Excelsior!

The dude working the joint even threw in an order of fries. If you find yourself in West Hollywood, nut up and go get an Oki Dog. This dag was so tasty I sent pics to buddies Brewer and Jake whilst partaking of this beaut.

The Red Hot. Tacoma, Washington.

2010-11-28T15:33:00.000-08:00

Tacoma. It's a dank little hovel, home to shipping yards, serial killers and Craigslist hookers. It's also the place to get the best damn dogs I've had in the Pac NW. My buddy and guest correspondent Robert "The Schneids" Schneider agrees. The Red Hot in Tacoma is for real, and worthy of a repeat visit.

The Red Hot has been on my to do list for a while, and it has recently received national pub from a show that I've never heard of called Chefs Vs. City on the Food Network. I don't watch that shit. I do however like to eat a good hot dog.

The menu at The Red Hot is fairly simple. There are 9 signature dogs, 3 sausage options, a couple of veggie selects, and one sandwich called the Pac Ave Italian Beef. There's also a few sides.

The Red Hot does not mess around when it comes to the quality of their beers. They boast one of the most extensive lists of IPA's I've ever seen. Just take a peep at their current tap selections:

Beer Valley Rosebud IPA
Hales Aftermath IIPA
Lazy Boy IPA
Stone Double Bastard
Ommegang Adoration
Silver City Clear Creek Pale
Boulevard Brewing Bully Porter
Leavenworth Friesan Pilsner
Two Beers Jive Espresso Stout
New Belgium Trippel
Old Tacoma Lager
CASK: Double Mountain Hop Lava IPA
NITRO: Oskar Blues Gordons Beer

Enough with the tour guide shit. Let's get to the eats. Here we have my first selections:

On the left is the Hilltop Strangler. An all beef dog with a slice of bacon, thousand island, onions, mustard, nacho cheese, & tomatoes.

On the right is the Destiny City Slaw Dog. An All beef dog with southern style coleslaw, house special all-meat chili. Onions and mustard to top off this beauty.

The Schneids came to The Red Hot bragging that I might need to wheel him out of the place on a stretcher. He wasn't far off the mark. Here's his first two picks:

On top is The Coney. An all beef dog with yellow mustard, chopped onions, and Red Hot's all meat chili. A simple, traditional masterpiece.

The second dog is the behemoth known as The Tide Flats. Two all beef dogs on an open faced bun, piled high with yellow mustard, onions, relish, tomatoes, sport peppers, jalapeno peppers, sauerkraut, all meat chili, coleslaw, nacho cheese, pickle spear, and celery salt. This monster comes with a fork and a knife. I saw beads of sweat forming on The Schneids' brow while he was pummeling this fucker.

For my next trick, I went for the 6th Ave Strut. An all beef dog with cream cheese, onions and tomatoes. They were calling this a traditional "Seattle Dog" but I prefer the street vendor version with grilled onions. Still a tasty dog for sure.

Nobody puts the hurt on a Coney dog quite like Schneids.

That's me with the Hilltop Strangler. It's an aptly named beast considering the effect it had on my arteries.

The Red Hot only serves all-beef natural casing hot dogs, served on poppyseed buns. The have that snap to them that I really love, and the girth of each dog is easy to manage. 3 of these bad boys is one too many, and I likely peeled at least a week off of my lifespan. That said, The Red Hot dogs are delicious and definitely worth the drive.

Best Dog In The Country?

2010-11-26T21:55:00.000-08:00

Some Louie from the Wall Street Journal dropped that heavy duty claim on Boston Speed's back in ought eight. Pretty lofty heights to live up to if you ask me. Hell I'm not sure I'd want that bestowed on my own dag joint. That's like comparing your band to the Stones. Nonetheless when I was up that direction a few weeks back I made the trip to check it out myself. Holly Eats gave Speed's it's highest marks, it seems to win Best of Boston pretty often and I love some proper dags so what the hell.

After walkin' all over Boston looking at history and graveyards we hopped a cab over to Speed's. We had no idea it was a cart way out in the the middle of Bumfuck Egypt's industrial park. Thankfully our cabbie was cool enough to hang out why we grabbed the dogs to go. Otherwise it would have been a long trot back to the hotel.

The missus at the Speed Wagon. They sell XXXXXXL (that's 6!) size shirts if that gives you and ideer what's going down at this wagon.

How they do it on a beater of a propane grill.

Viola! The Speed Dog "loaded" and the Smoked Boston Meat with some tasty Utz Classics and a Sam Adams chaser. Loaded means Speed's mustard, relish, bbq sauce, special chili sauce and onions. All listed as "Speed's" brand on a 1/2 lb smoked dog.

It wasn't bad but it's not the best dog I ever chowed on. The smoked beef sammy was badass though. That's where it's at when ordering up at Boston Speed's.

While we were there we hit a few more culinary delights. Mostly we ate the Jesus outta lobster rolls all over Boston and Maine. They are served on hot dog buns so that counts right?

This beaut was taken down at Neptune Oyster Bar in Boston.

We had another great lobster chow at some bar the day we got into town and we hit a joint that chubby goof from Man Vs. Food said was real good but the best was had at Red's Eats in Wiscasset Maine.

While shopping at Rabelais, a super rad book store that only carries food related books, we got turned on to a 2009 James Beard award winning restaurant called Hugo's in Portland Maine. We got a sweet sausage book full of goofy shit from 1967 at Rabelais and an awesome house cured charcuterie plate at Hugo's that is easily the best I've ever had

I may or may not ever go back to Boston Speed's but I'll be back to Maine for those Lobster rolls. Them shits were super good!

Hot Doggin' and Sausage stuffin' in So Dak.

2010-11-25T22:31:00.000-08:00

A few longtime bros drove deep into South Dakota wilds to shoot birds and drink beer. Of course we found time to slay some world class sausages.

The bountiful harvest. This accounts for a bout 1/3rd of the natural casing sausages we devoured. That bottle of ketchup wasn't my idea, they put that shit on everything in South Dakota.

Al. Our hunting guide and longtime buddy of Jake, just getting weird with the meats. I've hung out with this dude a few times and he always seems to have food hanging from his face.

The Mayor making quick work of some pork barrel spending.

Jake "wingmaster" Lancaster. This trip was his idea. His best idea ever.

Thanks to Garrett and Al at the Medicine Breaks for an awesome weekend adventure. You can read more about the trip at Superbeast.

Portland Oregon and a Slo Gin Fizz

2010-10-27T20:07:00.000-07:00

To make up for my lack of NYC dirty water dogs I hit a few buddy worthy spots while in PDX. Pine State Biscuits, Helser's and Otto's Sausage Kitchen.

Pine State had been on my got to get to list for a while. When I showed up and saw all the sweet biscuits, having the corn dog option just about fucked me up. In a moment of clarity I decided not to fight it and I ordered both. I was, after all, on vacation.

Andouille Corndogs!!!

And The Reggie. Fried chicken, bacon & cheese topped with gravy.

Next day we hit Helser's for some bloody mary's and breakfast. Sausage Breakfast? Choice of two? Don't mind if I do.

Chicken apple and Louisiana hot sausage, potato cakes and two eggs lookin at me. Dee-lish

Finally Otto's Sausage Kitchen. Case after case of encased meats. This place is glorious.

We picked up a nice Tuscan and a smoked andouille and had some friends over to buddy Pendy's house for some eats. Dressed the Andouille with a sweet potato apple hash and Gorgonzola. The Tuscan got Havarti and cranberry mustard. They all got stuffed in faces. Excelsior!

Wurstkuche. Los Angeles.

2010-10-23T19:48:00.000-07:00

I'm in the midst of a brutal month long production in Los Angeles (in case you wondering what has become of your beloved Superbeast). Today I finally got an afternoon to crawl from the editing suite bunker to see sunlight for the first time in weeks.

Looking for an exploring compadre, I called upon my long time buddy Tara "T-Funk" LaPlante to give me a tour of Amoeba records in Hollywood. For those that don't know, Tara is a bit of luminary in the techno music scene. She owns her own label called timefog and promotes artists and festivals all over the country. Who better to host a trip to a world famous record store?

After cleaning out Amoeba of all of their face melting riffage, and barely denting the soul and funk sections (I'm going back), we headed off to get a bite to eat. Tara surprised me with a suggestion of gourmet sausages. Hell, we've been pals since the early 90's, so she knows what I like.

Introducing Wurstkuche (pronounced wurst-ku-sha), an exotic sausage grill and imported beer haunt in the heart of the downtown Los Angeles historic arts district.

The place had a line going out the front door which is always a good sign. A hostess got our beer orders in while we perused the amazing menu. I started with a Kwak, and T ordered a La Chouffe Golden Ale. The Belgian and German bier selection is so deep and rich that you almost forget why you came to Wurstkuche in the first place.

Just kidding. I had my eye on the mind-numbing encased meats from the get.

Set your peepers on creeper and take a gander at these grade-A face stuffers. BEHOLD!!!

Here's our order:

Me:
Smoked turkey, Santa Fe jack cheese, Jalapeno stuffed sausage with carmelized onions and sweet peppers.
Duck, bacon and jalapeno stuffed sausage with spicy peppers.

T:
The Austin Blues, a hot and spicy, tri-pepper & hardwood smoked pork sausage with saurkraut.

T-Funk may look pint sized...but she walks with giants.

I'm still tasting the spicy german mustard in my old growth beard. Delicious.

The dissection delivered with surgical precision. Thanks Dr. T-Funk.

For my domesticated brethren out there, put this place on your "Honey-do" list if you have to.

Travelin' Dog

2010-10-20T09:14:00.000-07:00

Buddies, yours truly has been on the road a bit this year and neglecting this poor bloggity blog. However some decent burgs were visited and some that would fall in the lamestain category. Thankfully the lamers were more pass though vs actual destination. I managed to count San Francisco, NYC, Portland OR, Portland, ME (lobster rolls!!!), Boston and Seattle on my okee dokee list. I even met up with our own Buddy Brewer in Jet City. Superbeast was the consummate gentleman, we knocked back a few cold beers and went to the book get together for Rock Paper Show ( a little ditty I worked on that came out this year.) Here's where my tale of travel and dogs could have been awesome but sadly this is where you learn I fully suck.

Instead of the amazing possibility of being included in one of the Mike's Chili Parlor posts with Brewer I fucked up and couldn't make it. We did chug a couple coldies at Shorty's but the timing was not there either to partake of their Vienna's. No idea what we were thinking missing the chance to break dogs over suds...twice

The sad fact is I was in New York and didn't have a hot dog period (I did get properly intimidated at Shopsin's but that's another blog entry somewheres.) At least whilst in SF a return trip to Rosamunde was made to their newish second location. I didn't take a pic since I did a revisit to the Duck and Fig standard they have. It was still swell but not worth it's own separate blogo entry.

To hopefully make up for the suck I will now work on actual dog stories from coast to coast in their own respective posts.

Uncle Franky's.

2010-09-03T12:38:00.000-07:00

After a night of arm wrestling ice cold beers into submission, buddy Jake and I decided to don our lab coats and make a lunch hour rendezvous to Uncle Franky's in Northeast Minneapolis. It was my first visit back in nearly a year, so I figured we'd better do something special for lunch.

Uncle Franky's is probably the most well known brick and mortar hot dog establishment in the Twin Cities. To make this real newsworthy, I had never been to this joint before. Totally odd and out of character for me, I know.

I picked Jake up in my sweet Grand Marquis rental car, turned up the KQRS and and tuned my gut for maximum expansion. Godspeed!

Here's our bountiful harvest:
Four dogs.
Two orders of Cheese Fries.
One Diet Coke to make this meal extra-ironic.

Here's Jake's Chicago Dog and Coney Island Chili Dog. Hearty eats indeed.

I rolled with the Wall Street (grilled kraut, mustard and onions) and a Chicago. I got dissed on the sport peppers, but buddy Jake was kind enough to give me one of his own. That's what buddies are for buddies.

Probably one of the best bitin' pics we've done here at the blog. Jake is a fucking professional after all.

I put the smack down on that dog so hard the snap of the skin was heard miles down the old Mississippi.

As you can see from the portly gentleman sitting behind me, Uncle Franky's doesn't play to the waif hipster chick looking for hangover food. Nope, the standard patron here is the hard working, morbidly obese dude that's trying to sell one more Chrysler fuckin' Lebaron before the new year so he can buy his fat kids a new XBox.

In other words, there's good hot dogs and some decent people watching to boot.

*Take Note: The only way to break Jake off his cross-training, salad eating regimen is to get him so blind drunk the night before that he sleeps on his living room floor amidst a shredded Pretty Things album that his dog Harmon had his way with. That's how you make a Buddies & Hotdogs adventure come to fruition.

Mike, Mike and Mike's Chili.

2010-07-11T14:32:00.000-07:00

Buddies Mike "The Mayor" Haeg and Mike Rook came to conquer a mountain with me here in Seattle. On their first night in town I brought them to Mike's Chili, the world famous joint that serves a mean chili dog. The Mayor gave the entire Mike's Chili softball team keys to the city of Mt. Holly. This secured a fast friendship with Mike, the owner of the place. Buddies for life!

Mike's famous chili dog. Swimming in a pool of his beef chili, with shredded cheddar cheese and diced jalapenos. Sweet mercy!

There's Mayor Mike himself contemplating his next BM after destroying a Mike's chili dog. A major flaw in my judgement was bringing these guys to Mike's Chili on their first night in town. The shitter at my apartment has seen some horrible, horrible things.

Portland: A Buddies and Hot Dogs Adventure.

2010-05-17T21:37:00.000-07:00

My good buddy Mike "The Mayor" Haeg brought his lovely wife Tammy "The First Lady" to Portland for a little mini-vacation this past weekend. Seattle is about 3 hours north of Portland with no traffic, so I planned to interrupt their romantic weekend with beer drinking, story telling and a little hot dog eatin'.

It just so happened that I was super hungover from imbibing in Seattle's finest IPAs the night before. Like puke out the window going 75 MPH hungover. I pulled through like a trooper, slept in a rest stop and made it to Portland by 7 pm. Just in time.

Like Seattle, Portland has a huge contingent of street vendor carts. In one part of town they have half a city block closed off to contain these denizens of deliciousness. Keep in mind, most of these carts are selling some hippie gastronomy far too wholesome for my booze soaking-up tastes, so I had to be extra selective.

I've picked up a habit for speed reading menus to find exactly what I'm looking for in these circumstances. I happened across an "All-beef Bacon Dog" in about 2.9 seconds. SOLD!

Behold! A beast the size of a baby arm.

Succulently split down the middle, resting on two slices of thick cut bacon, german spicy mustard, and grilled onions, this hot dog sent from the heavens was Grade A Superbeast certified.

Thanks to Bubba Bernie's food cart. They make a mean dog.

I'm a brooding, crabby-assed crank for most of the time, but a good lookin' dog will get me deadeye serious about face stuffin'. Down the hatch!

The lovely couple were gracious hosts. I crashed on their hotel couch and drank their last Obsidian Stout before falling fast asleep. We woke up early on sunday for breakfast and record shopping. Mike nabbed a copy of the Flower Travellin' Band. So jealous. Thanks buddies!

*I don't know what the fuck Mancaster is doing, but he has a blistering edition of Mexico dog eatin' photos ready to be indulged by the masses. What gives Jake?

Boudi-licious Indeed

2010-03-27T20:39:00.000-07:00

Duders. I was born and raised in the south. My family came from Cajuns. My name should be spelled Peveteaux. Southern drawls and southern cooking. It's some of my favorite stuff. Imagine my dismay when Gene's Po' Boy's closed it's doors here in Austin a year ago. Gene had the best shrimp and oyster po' boys in town plus on Thursdays the smothered pork chop, sweet potato and collard green plate was untouchable.

Since Gene hightailed it back to New Orleans it's been slim pickings for legit Creole and Cajun grub. For example, a new joint opened called The Shuck Shack. Oysters, cold beers, sammies... I asked for some Trappey's (pickled sport peppers in vinegar) for my sammich. Not only did they not have it, they didn't know what I was talking about. Now I'd expect you Yankees to not know what Trappey's is but any self-respecting place claiming to be Cajun better have it by the case full. Shameful.

Forward to about a month ago and I stumbled across an article about the best sandwiches in Austin. One place listed was called Sambet's Cajun Deli and Fiery. It happened to be in a strip mall way up north for the LAST TEN YEARS. Nobody I knew had ever heard of it and a mess of my friends are coonasses from Louisiana and Mississippi who seek this stuff out. Needless to say I hauled ass up there to see what gives. It's a ratty hole in the wall. For real. All the walls, however, are lined almost floor to ceiling with hundreds of bottles of hot sauce, Trappey's included. In fact Trappey's is on the tables.

First few trips I always got the Lagniappe Lunch which was a muffuletta or a po' boy and etouffeé, gumbo or chowder. All of it super tasty.

Well crawfish are coming into season and they had something new on the menu. But before I get too much further into this action you dudes know what boudin is? There are quite a few types but the boudin that is common to the south is a rice and pork based sausage that doesn't exactly act like a sausage. Traditionally it’s the parts that you don't use in other cooking mixed in with rice and spice and cased. It's fucking good. You can read about it a whole lot here and here and I recommend you do.

Back to the grub. Right now on the Sambet's menu is the Boudi-licious. It's a giant po'boy baguette stuffed with a shit ton of boudin and melted cheese, smothered in etouffeé and topped with fried crawfish. Holy balls this thing is awesome. I could only eat half of it but you betcher ass I took it home and had some delicious dinner.

Behold the Boudi:

Chased with about three mason jars of sweet tea I was in cajun heaven.

GOING FOR THE GOLD

2010-02-19T23:31:00.000-08:00

Homeboys & Homegirls. I am writing as of this very moment from the mouth of madness, Vancouver, BC, Canada where they are having this little shindig called the 2010 Winter Olympixxx. Imagine, if you will, what it's like when the bars let out at the end of the night: the bleary eyes, the yelling, the falling down, the trio of dudes in red spandex with jamboxes strapped to their backs playing Dutch techno...Now imagine that going on all day long. Yeah, well I don't have to imagine shit, because it's all around me. Like when I'm just trying to go get a cup of coffee in the morning, BLAMMO, Dutch techno. So where is this all going? Simple. Drinkin' often leads to eatin', and it even more often leads to makin' new friends, and I am doin' both. Being a cultural ambassador has lead me to discover that the rumours I'd been hearing happen to be very true: Vancouver, BC has good some good-ass dogs.

So, I was in a rush and didn't have too much time to linger this day but I'd been told the night before about Dougie Dog. It sounded pretty legit, so I figured I'd kill two dogs with one stone and hit it alongside a Vancouver legend, Japadog. Well, whatevs to that plan. Japadog is under construction and I didn't feel like messing with the lineup at the cart. But, we'll get to that another day. Instead, I wanna talk about a little slice of heaven. Look up at that insane dog statue, it's lathering itself up for my enjoyment. When I saw that, a smile kidnapped my face, i think i even tried to hug someone walking by. I floated in. I was so ready, I knew I was going to leave one happy dude. The first thing I noticed is that there s a shit-ton of dogs available, 2 menus! Second was the Vienna beef signs. Hell. Yes. Then, all the root beers. I started slobbering, and this little kid with a mohawk looked at me like I was some sort of derelict bum, but I wasn't gonna let him freeze me out; he was about to break into a chilidog and some Mac n Cheese, so he was not only about to understand why I had that glazed look, but also about to look like a sloppy little delinquent, so we were even.
It only took me about 5 seconds to decide on a dog. When a dude names a dish after himself, well, you're a goofball if you don't try it, right?
I mean, look at this thing of beauty. The photo kind of sucks, but I didn't waste too much time gettin' fancy, I just wanted to dig in. This ain't Bon Appetit.

Straight up.
Italian Pastrami, Grey Poupon, cheddar and horseradish. Damn yeah. The snap on that dog was right on. The buns are locally made, and for this dog was slightly toasted. I was also told all the ingredients were local. The attention to detail made me wanna call all my good buddies back home.
Dougie Dog is legit. Dude has done his homework, and knows his dogs. He told me about a documentary he had just done about good ass dogs around the US of A, finishing it off by opening his own place. Right on.
I'm headed back soon, and I'm taking some folks with me. There's like, 10 other dogs I'm thinking about, and will just have to go apeshit over there one afternoon.
After that, I kept on truckin' and saw a bunch of people staring at a giant 35 foot TV screen and randomly breaking into nerve shredding renditions of "Oh Canada", while little Taiwanese kids played these huge ass drums that shook the ground and some old dude spray painted silver did "The Robot" to a crappy recording of "All Shook Up"by Elvis. Totally baffling day.

Clean Bobby and the Wienermobile

2010-02-10T19:53:00.000-08:00

Buddies some serious dog melding went down at Frank yesterday. It was like some fucking Close Encounters type coming home stuff. Not unlike a wiener magnet was inside the building.The Eagle has landed and all that action.

Behold the most iconic hot dog shaped driving apparatus docked right up to our humble establishment. The oldest and newest dynamos in the sausage world meet as if eHarmony set this shit up.

And if that wasn't enough the fine folks at Oscar Meyer came round the next day and buddy Clean Bobby got to show off his latest Hot Dog ink whilst piping a tune on his teeny weeny whistle gift. Just like his ink says, ladies, "HOT"

Bavarian Meats.

2010-01-16T14:32:00.001-08:00

It's tough to really immerse yourself in hot dog research when you don't have a good buddy at your side to contemplate the meats. I'm used to doing things with a sidekick. A compadre if you will. And that's exactly why things have been a little slow up here in the Pacific Northwest.

So one miserably shitty Sunday afternoon I decided to set off on my bike and see if I could stumble across anything blog worthy. After about an hour of roaming the streets like a wild dog, I happened across this little deli in the oddest of locations. The Pike Place Market.

Introducing Bavarian Meats.

I had already had one bad experience with the hot dogs at the market (see blog post where hobo violently shits himself), but I figured it wouldn't hurt to take a gander at the selection of encased meats.

Wow. Behind this glass counter rested an assortment of sausages and franks that rivaled anything I had ever seen before. A virtual Xanadu of pork and beef parts stuffed tightly into submucosa, or for the laymen, intestines. I wanted to eat everything in sight, and the little fat German woman behind the counter obliged by letting me sample a little nibble of all her wares. She was a real sweetheart, and in retrospect I wish I would have snapped a pic of her procuring the fine samplin' sausage.

I settled on the wieners, some saurkraut and some nose burning spicy German mustard that grew hair on my balls in a matter of seconds. I paired that treat with a side of my homemade bowel destroying chili. Bon apetite buddies!

Probably the best deli dogs I had ever had. They had that perfect snap to them and the kraut and mustard were an ideal complement. Delicious.

The Original Coney Island since 1921. 107 E. Superior Street, Duluth, MN

2010-01-12T03:25:00.000-08:00

Strip away the Scandinavian kitsch, Temperance River worshipping mountain sexuals, and Lake Superior-side vacation mansions and you’ll find a filthy old inland port town in Northeastern Minnesota called Duluth. The San Francisco of the Upper Midwest, which is hardly even slightly true and possibly only topographically at that, as my friend Jim likes to call it. Pass through from the north heading south on Superior Street mid-day Sunday and you’ll find haggard old seamen guarding the doors of the Owl’s Club, ne’er do well’s of all type peeking glass eyed from the doors of the Miketin Boarding house, and numerous hard working men and women just looking for the earth to grant them a soft spot to land as they come down from a long, hard, unforgiving weekend. In other words, my kind of place.

Tucked in on the western slope of the hill that terminates at the more upscale (soulless nexus of evil commercialism) Canal Park and Lakewalk area is The Original Coney Island Diner since 1921. I entered it’s hallowed halls just this past Sunday, with a hearty appetite and raging hangover to boot.

There’s something about a place like this that makes you feel good. Sitting in one of their booths wasn’t unlike floating in a thick and viscous amber bubble filled with Betty Boop paraphernalia, old RC cola signs, and salvaged lumber.

This wasn’t my first Coney Island dining experience, so the menu wasn’t much of a surprise. Coney Islands, Coney Islands with Cheese, Fries, Cheese Fries, Chili Cheese Fries, etc., etc. The staff was polite if not a bit tight-lipped but I wasn’t much in the mood for conversation anyway. The PYT and I were the only folks in the joint except for the help and a woman who looked like she’d been sipping the same cup of bad coffee since the place opened up nearly 90 years ago.

Four Coney Islands with onions, two orders of onion rings, and a bowl of chili. The onion rings were frozen, presumably from some monolithic Sysco-like left of the center of the plate specialists. They were served with a dense French Onion/Tzatziki-sauce that made them almost tolerable. I knew right away from the sight of the translucent and overcooked onions that these particular Coney Islands would not meet my high and discriminating standards. As I snapped into my first bite, I noticed there wasn’t much of a snap at all but more of a languid recoil. And the buns. Oh, god, the buns: They were about as tough as Carhartt canvas coveralls made stiff by sweat and wood glue.* Goddamnit if they don’t make a good bowl of chili though.

*Less than stellar review aside; I ate three of the hot dogs, most of both orders of onion rings and the entire bowl of chili.

What's with all this Vampire shit?

2009-12-30T20:45:00.000-08:00

I saw a t-shirt the other day, Team Jacob. Thought it was pretty funny since my buddy Jacob (geetar for Moonlight Towers and burgeoning author...) should actually have a team that favors him. So I went to buy one and what the fuck, they are all in girlie size. He's not particularly a lard ass but he's no lady boy either so we obviously had a fit issue.

My sweet old lady kindly pointed out I was a dipshit and that Team Jacob was from Twilight. A movie *slash* phenomenon about teeny bopper vampires made for prepubescent girls and fat aging nerds. I had heard of said flick but promptly ignored it as much as possible. All I really knew was there was some clown millimeters away from having a unibrow and some chick who was high as a kite all the time who may or may not be vampires. I did not know about this Team Jacob and shirts for his undersized minions.

I've since seen commercials for another teenage vampire show, probably on the CW or some shit, and a few episodes of True Blood that has possibly the worst acting this side of Dexter. Must be all the tits keeping losers tuned in because all this new interest in vampires isn't that interesting. Where was all the fervor when Catherine Denuve was sucking face and blood with Susan Sarandon and Bowie back in 1983? That there's some compelling undead shit.

You must be thinking what the French does this have to do with hot dogs? Well dear readers buddy KJ and I were looking for a new eatin hole recently and we came across a spot called Drakula. No shit Chet. DRAKULA. Sounds phony baloney eh? Well it's for real and It was weird and it was empty except for one table with real life Romanians that seemed a little like gangsters. Maybe it was authentic Romanian decor but it felt a lot like walking into a cafeteria at an old folks home um... with gangsters in the corner. It has about as much to do with Vampires as I expect Twilight does. It does have a lot to do with traditional Romanian eats however. One of those eats happens to be dry bean stew with sausage which has a pretty unappetizing name but it was damn tasty.

Moral of the story is more beans and sausage, less teenage vampires!

Double Down at the Triple Bill

2009-12-28T20:26:00.000-08:00

I found these pics when I fucked up my iPhone and had to back it up before I swapped it for a new one. Kinda forgot about this culinary adventure courtesy of the Round Rock Express Concessions. Now don't get excited baseball dorks. I wasn't at the Dell Diamond for a game. No I was there for a different triple header. One that started with Willie Nelson, rolled into John Cougar and ended with me walking out on Bob Dylan.

Apologies to Dylan fans but if you open your set with a classic and halfway through it's finally discernable as Rainy Day Women #12 and 35 the day has come to stop wastin folk's time and money. That mumbly old coot needs to let us enjoy the records and put the kibosh on his blind faith followers promising "this tour is way better." It's not and it never will be again.

But I digress. This wasn't meant to be a musical review. No friend, this is an entry about the two dogs I ate while enjoying Willie and John. Now I won't say I enjoyed the dogs as much as the tunes of Willie and Johnny because they weren't what I'd call stellar but they weren't as bad as the lame ass beer served up in Round Rock.

First up something surely advertised with some clever "Texas sized" name, which I forget, meant to lure you into the false sense of "value"

Ladies and gents the fairly large corn dog and overpriced weak brews:

Not to be out done they offer up another "big as Texas" type thing with not one but two x-tra long dogs. No idea why chili and cheese wasn't an option but I doctored it up with jalapenos and relish to help ol' plain Jane.

There ya have it dog lovers. Keep on keepin' on.

Oh Heavenly Dog

2009-11-27T19:24:00.000-08:00

No this isn't a post about Chevy Chase and Benji teaming up for big laughs in a tail of murder, mystery and puppy love circa 1980. Although you know that little bitch Benji, and for sure Chevy on a bender, would dig some of the grub going on at this California joint.

On yet another grueling trip to Sacramento I made my usual stop at Capitol Dawg (chowing on a Deftones dawg, River Cats dawg and some sweet potato fries) but since I've already yapped about that action plenty I didn't think I'd have anything worthy to post about from these travels.

Lo and behold Elk Grove, the only town I've been to in CA more boring than Sacramento, has a new dog getting place. Heavenly Dog is the spot and they have pretty tasty dogs.

I decided to pretend I was from Hollywood and modify everything I ordered like a jackass. I picked the Skippy Dog but for no good reason left the grilled onions off and onion rings on. They have a nice selection of relish and mustards and since the Skippy dog came with peanut butter I chose cranberry mustard. Topped with Jack cheese that shit was right on time.

I also made up my own dog which was basically the Chihuahua dog (nacho cheese, jalapeno relish) with tri tip chili and wrapped in bacon. Over at the relish bar I loaded that sucker up with sauerkraut relish (seemed like sauerkraut with green food colouring), jalapeno relish and dill relish. Plus a squirt of "bistro sauce" for good measure. That fucker was a super mess but tasty.

The only thing I did wrong was the order of which I chowed. I should have saved the Skippy dog for dessert.

Masa in Tacoma.

2009-11-24T13:01:00.001-08:00

I got suckered into driving a couple of gals to Tacoma with the promise of an unbelievable hot dog. I was a bit suspicious as there was little mention of the actual restaurant, and the legend of the particular dog was seemingly untraceable to an original source. Fair thee well. I decided to go anyway. It was a rainy Sunday, and the promise of seeing some of Tacoma's local flavor was intriguing.

Of course these chicks were late, and I don't make a habit of Driving Miss Daisies unless I'm getting my passport stamped to Bonetown. I had second thoughts about this adventure from the get.

Tacoma is a pretty much a dump. My friend Peezy once said that he wanted to shit in every dryer in Schaumburg, Illinois because it was such a terrible place. I had similar feelings about Tacoma. There were a ton of foreclosed houses, and I saw at least 40 inches of butt crack while cruising the strip.

A fancy shmancy new school fusion sports bar called Masa? You must be joking. This can't be the place where I've heard rumors of an unbelievable hot dog.

I'm very rarely ever wrong. In fact, I can't recall a time I've ever second guessed my inherent ability to sniff out amazing food in the past.

It happened in Tacoma. Behold! the Tijuana Dog. An all beef frank, wrapped in bacon, swimming in a molten hot queso sauce, and topped with pico de gallo.

Crushing bacon wrapped all beef isn't just a hobby, it's a fucking religion. I pray to the altar of Intestinal Fortitude. In the house of God, I'm the High Priest of Meat.

Alice and Manny felt bad for dragging me all the way to Tacoma, so they bought my Tijuana Dog. I also got to snap this keep sake of some girl-on-girl gobbling that is officially a permanent feature in my Spank Bank. Thanks ladies!

Po Dog

2009-11-17T23:00:00.000-08:00

The diabolical beast phone was ringing off the hook, because my buddy Robert "The Schneids" Schneider had a hot tip about a new hot dog joint opening on Capital Hill in Seattle. I pulled out my clipboard. Took some notes. Looked up some shit on the internet, and sanitized my hands. Turns out the Schneids was on to something. Something delicious.

Po Dog Hot Dogs.

We pulled up on a Saturday afternoon. It was the Grand Opening. The place was brand spankin' new. I'm always hesitant of a hot dog shop that that isn't a dive, but I was really hungry and anxious to try Seattle's take on an American legend.

Once inside, the place was very well designed with easy access to the counter, and ample seating for fat hot dog eating asses, like mine. Pop art pugs covered the walls, along with wallpaper that featured six shooters. Nice touch.

The help was friendly as I alerted them immediately that we were correspondents with the world famous Buddies and Hot Dogs global franchise. The nice gal behind the counter offered me a menu to peruse the the many varieties of encased meat. Engage salivation.

It's always tough to write a review about a Hot Dog haberdashery on opening day, but I have faith that this place is going to something special. They have everything working in their favor.

First up, the BLTA Dog. That stands for Bacon, lettuce Tomato and Avocado on a soft brioche bun with a side of dippin' sauce. I added a little lemon aioli per the recommendation of the girl at the counter.

The franks here at Po Dog have some girth, so the freshly made brioche bun is a nice buttery touch. The fixings were more than adequate and the avocado was ripened to perfection. My one qualm here is that the construction of the dog made for complicated and messy eating. I took one bite of the dog and it teeter tottered and slapped me right in the face, dumping all the goodies into my basket. No worries. This could be resolved with a simple exploration in foundation engineering and construction. I also would have wrapped the dog in bacon, instead of simply adding chunks of bacon atop the fixings. Still delicious.

Next up we have the South of the Border Dog. Guacamole, house-made pico de gallo salsa, and sour cream.

Again, the bun really helped manage a tricky dog here. This one was a little easier to wrangle because of the delicious guacamole held everything together. Definitely a winner.

One of the finest palates in the hot dog eatin' game right there, kicking the tires.

The Schneids rolled deep with this deadly duo. The Deep Fried Danger Dog features a deep fried pepper bacon wrapped dog, with sauteed onions and chili sauce. And the Texas Dog had mesquite BBQ sauce, Tillimook cheddar cheese and homemade crispy onion straws.

The Schneids doesn't fuck around. His hunger monster had a one track mind. His review? 5 stars.

That's yours truly and Laura the owner. We would like to thank her for the hospitality and the fine franks. We will be back to try the Wasabi Egg Roll Dog and their take on the Chicago Dog for sure.

Mike's Chili Parlor.

2009-11-07T16:14:00.000-08:00

My old pal Jake meandered his broke ass all the way out to the Pacific Northwest to visit yours truly. I talked a big game about the various Seattle delicacies that we had to try, but unfortunately we spent the entire weekend getting shit can drunk and meeting new buddies.

The one place we managed to drag our polluted, beer soaked asses to was Mike's Chili Parlor. This place was recommended to me from a few locals, so I figured we should give it the old college try. It was amazing, and this is our story.

Mike's has been owned and operated for 4 generations of the Semandris family. A friendly bunch, with a distinct family secret chili recipe. Located right off the locks in the Ballard community, Mike's has been feeding cold and rained on fishermen for eons. They received some recognition when they were featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives a while back, but don't worry, it hasn't turned them into Hollywood pussies.

The owner, Mike (the 4th generation one), was nice enough to introduce himself. Maybe one of the coolest guys I've met, and he still makes all the chili everyday.

Mike's is your classic dive bar, complete with characters like Red, a wispy white haired jokester that finds his-rear end glued to a stool at this joint everyday. The bartender was a younger gal with a gift of gab. We alerted her early that we were the men behind the "world famous" Buddies and Hotdogs blog. She gave us her delicious recommends: a chili dog with all the fixings, and a small bowl of chili and a couple of ice cold PBR's. Game on buddies!

This is the famous Mike's Chili Dog, an all beef frank split down the center and grilled on a flat top. This monster features grated cheddar cheese, a heaping mound of bean chili, jalapenos, and fresh diced onions. The fixings are additional, but they're only like 50 cents each. The white bread bun is there simply to soak up the cheesy chili goodness. The chili is spicy enough to tickle your tonsils, but the onions and jalapenos do well to bring the zing.

Here's an overhead view of Jake's chili dog, and a bowl of Mike's finest. The chili is ground beef based with no beans. It has a nice kick and smooth and light consistency. It's greasy enough to keep out the wimps, and delicious enough send this buddy back for more. It's just a really good bowl of chili. Nothing fancy, but perfect for a rainy hungover day in Seattle.

Here's a cross section of the chili dog. Witness the layers of bowel crushing goodness. Boom!

Jake is a big fan of Mike's Chili, he also wore that silly ass Steve Zissou shit all weekend. He fit in nicely in this fishing community. A real swashbuckler, a regular ship hand.

Thumbs up from this Superbeast. I look pretty handsome considering we were up until 5 am the night before pounding Rainier (cool fuckers and the French pronounce it "RonYay").

The chili and the damage done.

This just might be the best hangover cure in Seattle. I walked into this place burping up acid, and I walked out feeling like a million bucks.

*Jake and I writing this one together. It's like a long distance relationship, with an enduring interest in hot dogs.

Another Old Ass Coney Island

2009-10-30T19:30:00.000-07:00

I had to make a trip back to Oklahoma recently which typically irritates the hell outta me. This trip however was to go to my Grannie's 100th. Pretty amazing to think about living 100 years and all the inventions she's witnessed like microwaves and Girls Gone Wild. Plus she's rad. Aside from the hundy b-day there really wassn't much more joy in heading up I-35 so I managed to salvage the trip by getting some dags in my gullet. Thankfully OKC's lack of culture is almost made up for by it's multiple hot dog joints.

This trip we decided to forgo heading straight to Coit's or Johnnie's (chronicled in past buddy posts) and instead hit the Coney Island. My sweet old lady has been going here with her pops since she was a wee lass. I hadn't been here in a few years and pretty much forgot about it. As with every single Coney Island that has been around since the early 1900's it is owned by a Greek family and has the traditional Greek Style spaghetti, basic dogs and that's about it.

Right away the front window was inviting.

Getting up to the counter was also promising with a bin of red hot boilers

Couple passable dogs. Chili had a wonky flavor but the dog was not bad. The bummer was the beer selection was super lousy so I passed. Please forgive me buddies, I've made up for it.

Here's the one thing I really dug. Being from Oklahoma OU football is a way of life. Even though this season is pretty dismal. They had this wall that they have been keeping the seasons from way back through now. They even mark the years we won the conference and national championships.

p.s. here's some proof of how yer raised in Sooner Country.

p.p.s. We hit Coit's on the way outta town for a road dog and a root beer. They were delicious.

Molotes.

2009-09-20T02:25:00.001-07:00

I went to a really good Oaxacan joint for dinner in Ballard called La Carta. They served mostly small plates for under 10$, and had an amazing tequila list that I didn't really tangle with because I was incredibly hungover from the night before.

I think I may have discovered my new favorite dish folks. Molotes. Beef sausage and potato filling inside a deep fried homemade tortilla. With three different sauces (a black bean puree, a cream sauce, and a green chilli sauce) and Oaxaqueno cheese crumbled on the top.

I like to think of these little fuckers as the original pizza roll, only made with vastly superior ingredients.

Frank

2009-08-24T19:24:00.000-07:00

Dear buddies as I have been saying I had a post to get on here that you would be interested in. That poster below from the Aesthetic Apparatus fellows was printed by my li'l design company down here in Austin. Why you might ask? Well it's not just AA. I have been talking to all my poster maker pals and asking them to make me hot dog prints. Now Jake has been to my pad so he may be thinking "Hot dog prints? You don't have any more wall space dumbass."

He'd be correct but this new venture buddy Northcutt and I got into does. It's called Frank and our sweet old ladies and us are serving hot dogs and sausage to the meat loving masses down in ATX.

We got our shit together and got opened in July. While everyone here on Buddies and Hot Dogs loves dogs as much as their own mammy, due to the lack of a good dog place in Austin we kinda wondered if anyone down thisaway did. Well they do and we've been busier than a three legged cat trying to cover a turd on a marble floor. So busy we only have the restaurant and bar open so far. In the next couple weeks we'll have a full blown fancy ass coffee house and boutique grocery/deli which will be selling the prints.

See these exterior walls prove all that:

Here's a couple things we've painted on the inside with the grocery sign just going in yesterday.

There's a lot more to see but I'll bore you with some of that later. Here's some of the stuff we've been serving up:
Chili Dogs

Chicago

Slaw Dog

Aligator boudin fritters with hearts of palm salad and remoulade

Beef tenderloin sausage with portobellos, bacon crumbles and demi-glace.

Lamb sausage with grilled Haloumi cheese, harissa aioli and roasted red peppers

Our custom made Jackalope - Antelope rabbit sausage, sriracha aioli, huckleberry compote and applewood smoked cheddar

And last but not least our other permanent menu sausage the Texalina - beef and pork with South Carolina mustard BBQ sauce, grilled cole slaw and white cheddar cheese. This one is served in our Flapjacket. A corndog batter jacket.

Here's a couple of the drinks:

Bloody Mary made with bacon infused vodka

And the Italian Honey. A drink made with vodka, midori and garnished with prosciutto

Anyway duders. This is what I've been up to the last few months. Finally got the doors open and with just a little more work it will be in full swing. You can see our temporary site here which has some of our menus:

Hot Dogs Cold Beer

No shit I got that URL. The clowns of the world were sleeping on that one. New full site coming in the next week or so with shirts and other crap we've been designing and working on.

Come pay a visit.

Haute Dawg

2009-08-24T12:06:00.001-07:00

New buddy Michael of Aesthetic Apparatus sent me this wiener-centric objet d' art. Sorta reminds me of an encased meat Medusa. But unlike the Medusa of classical antiquity, there's nothing monstrous about this guy's form.

Thanks Michael!

Taxi Dogs

2009-08-02T22:24:00.000-07:00

"Johnny come lately...the new kid in town.
Everybody loves him, when he comes around."

I'm new to Seattle. I've only been here for a little over a month. In that time I've had a few adventures when I haven't been at work making the advertising.

For instance, I got shit bag wasted with some South African lesbians. One of which dumped a beer on my head and grabbed my balls so hard I screamed like a howler monkey. She laughed and called me a "pufter."

I've explored miles upon miles of the Emerald City on foot with my faithful companion Kublai Khan. The little bastard has pissed on every square inch of this town by now, I swear.

I've watched bums cry, bums shit, bums shoot up, and bums dance a jig. I've also seen a bum try and steal my dog's tennis ball. Bad idea bum.

In a month's time I think it has rained once, for like two minutes.

In a month's time I've introduced Seattle to Sweet Tea, and managed to annoy the hell out of everybody in the bars where I've preached the powers of its golden bronze goodness.

In exactly one month's time I went without eating one freaking hot dog.

Well, on Saturday I decided enough was enough. I donned my research smock, took a deep breath, and soldiered through the streets scouring for the scent of all-beef encased meats.

Introducing Taxi Dogs, located on the promenade of the Pike's Place Market. Behold!

It's hard to miss Taxi Dogs, with the wafting smells and giant hot dog sign.

It's a simple storefront. One that beckons the weary tourist, an occasional hobo, and me. A dog doctor knee deep in his quest for the Pacific Northwest's equivalent to Hot Doug's and the Wienery.

Taxi Dogs doesn't really have speciality hot dog combinations, simply a list of different sausages. You then add additional toppings of your choosing. They have kosher all-beef franks, bratwurst, kielbasa, hot links, chicken garlic sausage, weisswurst and more. Unfortunately the toppings cost extra. Lame.

I've always thought the proof of a good dog is all in the quality of the sausage and the resilliance of the bun. The canvas if you will.

The topping pairings are what separate a simple sausage in a bun, from a work of art.

Taking that into account, Taxi Dogs wins with the meat and bun. They fail when they charge extra for toppings. That's an expensive lunch for a regular encased meat savant such as myself.

Here's how I made the magic happen:

One Hot Link (spicy pork and beef sausage) with slaw, onions, yellow mustard, and some BBQ sauce.

The bun was a chewy hard roll, almost like a warm bagel, or pretzel. It held the girth of the hot link nicely, and the chewiness of it all was a nice surprise. It held the flavors together like a pistol grip ready to blast all over your taste buds, not on your shirt.

One Kosher all-beef frank with chili, cheddar cheese and yellow mustard.

This dog was ridiculously huge. Kind of like what we Minnesotan's call a Dome Dog. I prefer a thinner wiener with a snap. This dog was a mouthful. The bun was your typical soft, enriched white flour. Nothing special, but what you would expect with a chili cheese.

Here's a cross-section of the Hot Link. Nice weight to these dogs for sure.

Look at the size of that chili cheese!

While devouring my first dog in over a month, I spotted this pile of bums passed out in the grass. One guy kept trying over and over again to stand up. He smashed his face into the dirt about 20 times in a row before finally flailing on the ground crying real baby tears and screaming his head off. Bums crying seems like it would be the saddest thing ever, but these guys were actually pretty funny.

This bum finally got a hold of the tree to prop himself up, and then he promptly shit himself. That's when I decided to leave.

All in all Taxi Dogs has a fine selection of sausages and bun brethren. It was pretty expensive (about $7 per dog with my toppings) and I'm not a fan of dog's that are a solid inch and half in diameter. As I was taking pictures, the girl behind the counter asked where I was from. She then asked why I didn't get a "Seattle Dog?"

Wha??? Apparently there's a hot dog specific to Seattle. It has cream cheese on it. BOOM!

Next time buddies. Next time.

What is this Dostoevsky Dogs?

2009-07-28T23:59:00.000-07:00

Man that last jackass is a windbag. How about this.

Back home in Austin me and the missus stop in to the Jackalope to grab a quick bite before seeing buddies Experimental Aircraft open for Stellastarr*

Went with the Tijuana Dog. 1/4 pounder wrapped in bacon, fried, cheese, japs and chipotle mayo. Not bad. Not bad.

Pronunciation: \shə-ˈkä-(ˌ)gō, -ˈkȯ-, -gə\

2009-07-28T22:06:00.000-07:00

Next stop on the road, buddies, is the Windy City. It's the July trip to the Flatstock and the Pitchfork. This year was fucking awesome because it was about 105 in Austin and 70 in Chicago. And by tradition I planned the trip to land me in Chicago with two extra days to go say hello to Hot Doug's

Let's get started.

Dateline: Friday 10:30 AM. Trip one to Doug's. As usual the amazing offerings made it tough to decide but I crossed my fingers that the ones I'd miss Friday would still be around Monday. So I rolled with the Game of the Week:
Spicy Smoked Alligator Sausage with Cajun Remoulade and St. Pete's Blue Cheese

And the one dog I had always been wanting but was never on the menu when I was in town. The very same sausage that Anthony Bourdain raved about. Duders I present Foie Gras and Sauternes Duck Sausage with Truffle Aioli, Foie Gras Mousse and Sel Gris

That is possibly the richest thing I've ever eaten other than the Hamburger Rossini from Bourdain's Les Halles (ground to order, char grilled, slice of house made foie gras terrine melting on top, dip of black truffle and red wine sauce)

I loves me the tasty animals.

Dateline: Friday PM, maybe Saturday AM

After Jesus Lizard, Tortoise, Built To Spill and Yo La Tengo buddies Jay Ryan and Bobby Dixon whip it into Dengeos for a couple of late night dogs and rings. Pretty ok dog considering the time of night.

Dateline: Next two days of Pitchfork. Lots of bands including Jay's band Dianogah, who were awesome. So here's a variety of festival sausages.

Ćevapčići. Their sign was Pork+Beef+Lamb+Garlic+Salt and Pepper. Shit was right on. Not sure how many I ate but the roasted red pepper and eggplant sauce made it.

Buddy Northcutt's Brat. Perfectly fine for festival food.

Cajun something or other. Also passable considering I took 60 PBR's in on Friday and left 10 for Saturday. Granted I had new buddy Nathan helping but not bad for two guys.

The last band. Also my all time favorite. The Flaming Lips

Dateline: Monday 10:30 AM. Thee music is over. Park food has been replaced by the previous night's pancakes, li'l smokies and bacon I cooked up at Jay's. Now back at Doug's to make sure I get my fix of the good stuff. Today I chow on the Jamaican Jerk Pork Sausage with Spicy Mango-Passion Fruit Mayonnaise and Roasted Plantains plus the Burgundy and Citrus Pork Sausage with Sun-Dried Tomato Mustard and Montsegur Peppercorn Cheese.

Badass.

As our time in Chi-Town comes to a close we haul ass to Kuma's for a pre flight burger. Kuma's is the Hot Doug's of burger joints plus METAL. Awesome tunes, hot gals with the tattoos bringing beers and burgers named after metal bands. And I'm not talking that pussy hair metal like Poison or Ratt I'm talking about Mastodon, High On Fire and Sabbath. I decided to have the most metal of the burgers on the menu. The Slayer. Pile of fries topped with a ½ lb. Burger, Chili, Cherry Peppers, Andouille, Onions, Jack Cheese, and Anger. How do you pass up Andouille and Anger?

It was the size of three of my stomachs but I gave it my best. Excellent burger even if the patty, sausage and a few chili cheese fries were all I could get down.

So with that I leave this epic post and plan my next trip back to be pretty much exactly the same.

Hotel Dogs

2009-07-28T21:43:00.000-07:00

Buddies, I have been ramblin' again so here comes a post-a-palooza. A veritable sausage tour. Or some shit like that.

First up. Back to Sacramento. Don't ask. That place sucks the donk. However since I have discovered Capitol Dawg it's slightly less irritating to make the trip.

Since I was just there two weeks prior I sorta had a plan. Drop in, grab a couple to go dogs and slug back a sixer at the Holiday Inn where I was shacked up. So the first part went on schedule. I even got there for Blue Monday which was 88¢ PBR bottles. Downed a couple whilst the chef grilled my #6 Monarchs Dawg: mustard, swiss cheese and sauerkraut and #9 River Dawg: mustard, onions and cole slaw. Side of sweet potato fries please.

Now where the plan went astray is Suckramento has a severe shortage of Get Quicks downtown. And it's not like the part of downtown I was in was all skyscrapers and shit. It's boring stuff next to more boring stuff and Capitol Dawg. So why there wasn't a beer procurement facility between my dog pick up and the sleepin' shed is beyond me. Moral of the story here is a man with two dogs will gladly buy a bucket of brew for $35 from the hotel bar when in a pinch.

All said and done it was maybe the best room eats I've had. You guys figure out the sliding scale on hotel food on your own.

Hotel Dogs and the most expensive six pack ever purchased:

Blessed.

2009-07-23T09:59:00.001-07:00

Not only is today my 33rd birthday, but it's also National Hot Dog Day! It's no coincidence that my pops used his encased meat to help make me on this very special holiday.

When : July 23rd

National Hot Dog Day celebrates one of America's favorite summer sandwiches. It is only fitting that this dog gets its day.

Its summertime. Hot dogs are center stage on the grill, and at picnics all across America. They are at the ballpark. They are sold from carts on street corners in every city. It's not hard to find them. We consume hundreds of millions of hot dogs on the Fourth of July alone.

Enjoy National Hot Dog Day to the fullest. Have a couple of hot dogs for lunch or dinner. And, don't forget to cook a few on a stick at the evening campfire.

What's in a hot dog? Don't' ask, and we won't tell. Sometimes, its best if you don't know.

Happy National Hot Dog Day!

I was also born in 1976, the 200th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. My birthday is like the new number of the beast, yo!

#hotdogs #America #Freedom #boner

Thanks to superbuddy Dschwen for the find.

WTF Seattle?

2009-07-12T16:36:00.000-07:00

R.I.P. Oscar Mayer, Jr.

2009-07-08T22:19:00.001-07:00

It's been a tough couple of weeks for some of my favorite celebs.

First Ed McMahon, the guy that gave me "HEY-YO!!!!!" kicked the bucket.

Then Farrah Faucet. An inspiration for many a premature boner.

And of course Michael Jackson. A weird dude who still gets the lasses to dance in hordes whenever I drop his vinyl, decided to moonwalk his way to heaven.

Now Oscar Mayer, Jr. The grandson of the founder and the third Oscar Mayer to head the company. Not only is this dude a hot dog luminary, but he was also a pretty smooth geezer, marrying a 21 year old at the golden age of 85.

Must have been all the wieners.

On The Road Again

2009-07-01T15:37:00.001-07:00

Just got back from a trip to California. Wee bit jet lagged so I'll cut through the chit chat and get to it:

Sacramento 6.26.09
Capitol Dawg

Not to shabby of a joint. Lots of decent looking items on the menu and a super creepy hot dog man staring you down. I decided to go with the Deftones Dawg (mustard, chili, cheese, onions) always the best test of a dog joint. And the River Cats Dawg (mustard, swiss, pastrami, kraut) I'm a sucker for any place that puts more meat on top of a hot dog. The Deftones had a just shy of a shitload of onions. A few too many for my taste but it was still pretty alright. Pastrami dog was good and the side of sweet potato fries and Anchor Steam fixed it all up.

San Francisco 6.28.09
EOS

Hit this place with buddy Swamp Viking when I pulled into San Fran Sunday afternoon. Yeah he has a stupid name but his friends Heather and Tami, who bartend there, are rad and they took care of us all night. Good local brews, Shiitake Mushroom Dumplings, Madras Curry Potato Cakes with spiced pineapple chutney and some other tasty crap I forget because we got shit hammered. This here was the main course. Wild Boar with caramelized onions and a pomegranate gastric. La Te Da.

San Francisco 6.29.09
Rosamunde and Toronado

This is a sweet li'l marriage of businesses. Rosamunde is a tiny sausage shack right next door to Toronado, a kick ass craft beer pub. The arrangement is you walk next door and order the dog and then carry it back to Toronado and continue getting blotto.

Rosamunde has a pretty cool design aesthetic and a pink haired German lady running the grill making it work on all levels. Once yor dog is coming off the grill you pick two toppings and go to town.

Their nicely done painted window:

Thee Menu:

Thee Sausage Hole:

Just look at all them delicious shits

So even though I got primed with a variety of cold beers like Anchor Liberty Ale, and Lagunitas Hairy Eyeball, and Bear Republic Racer 5 IPA on the suggestion of buddy Hudson Bell I tried the Russian River Concecration next. It went swell the duck and fig sausage with chili, hot peppers and honey wasabi mustard.

Now before you see the less than pint size glass below and think "that's not a real beer" this is from the RR web site - Concecration: A stong dark ale aged for 6 months inside used cabernet sauvignon barrels with currants added. 10.5% booze.

This was some strong hooch and went real fine with the concoction I got next door. Here's a crappy picture but I'll be back again to take more.

Serious Business

2009-05-28T11:24:00.000-07:00

Super good buddy Chris has been hosting a Memorial Day party for 12 years now. It has always been a lot of fun, but in the past 5 or 6 years, the awesome factor has really been ramped up. We're talking live random jams, wicked deejays, random video projections, ever flowing kegs, and like a hundred or so really good folks. Buddies. Good ones. But the real feather in the cap is always the food. Dude loves to cook, so it's guaranteed he's gonna do something loony. Plus, everyone else brings side dishes, so it becomes a huge crazy feast of REALLY ridiculously good grub. Last year, I think he made like, 200 lbs of Adobo chicken. This year, he told me he wanted to roast a pig. I thought he was just talking shit, but I could see that weird gleam in his eye. We've been friends for almost 20 years, so I knew he wasn't joking around. Sure enough, a few weeks before Memorial Day, he started talking again. It seemed to be a forgone conclusion, so I figured I had better break out the camera.

Friday, the cooker showed up. In the day, it looked alright, sort of harmless. At night, it was like some lost prop from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The second one, with Dennis Hopper. I love that movie. Anyway, it had a smoker pit on one side, and a rotisserie on the other, large

enough for a human being to be roasted on it. It was kind of gnarly.

On Saturday, I went over there around 7:30 pm, and they were starting to dress it up, and get it ready to go on the fire, which was a MAJOR task. Luckily, there were like, 10 dudes there to make it happen. It had to be rigged up with all these rods for the spit, which is pretty tough when you consider you're ramming blunt rods through a pig's body.

After that, the pig got stuffed with like, a whole rosemary bush, and a year's harvest of carrots and onions and mushrooms. Tons of seasoning and oil, too. Oh. And two 10 lb loins. That's right. Pig stuffed pig. It's like a some sort of riddle.

I missed them hoist the dude onto the spit, because I had to leave to for a bit, but when I got back at midnight, I signed on for a surreal, 3 dude all-nighter, cooking pig & drinking beer. Serious buddy time. There were only 3 things that needed to be talked about. How hot the fire was staying, how hot the pig was cooking, and how cold the beer was tasting. I should mention, if you ever plan to do this, get one of those radar thermometers. You pretty much can't do this without one, because you'll flip your shit after about the third hour when the thing starts to break up and split, and by that time you've already had like, a sixer, so you'll probably panic, thinking it's all going to hell. But really, if you've got one of these, you can lay back, radar gun in one hand, cold one in the other, and just play laser tag with the thing.

By 8:30 the nest morning, we were delirious, but it's cool. I smelled like fire, so when I went home to crash, the aroma gave me good power nap dreams. It was awesome, and when I woke back up a few hours later and finished the coffee my sweet lady had made me, I was ready to get back and see what I missed. Oh, and to set up the DJ area. Here's a pic of Buddy Chris layin' on some "mop water". I have no idea what was in that concoction, but it sizzled nicely.

Buddy Geoff was running late, with buddy Daniel, but he got there just in time, 15 hours after the pig first felt the flames, to witness the gathering of the meat. First off, it was heavy as the universe, so when we tried to take it off the rotisserie, there was a lot of dudes straining, but we couldn't drop all of our hard work! After a major workout, our captive audience sighed relief as we got it to the table. Then the master chef Chris got in there, and proceeded to get busy. Like a magician, he presto'd that pig into aluminum trays of tender goodness. Oh lord, was it tender. Didn't quite taste like pig, didn't taste like chicken...just tasted like MEAT. Never have had anything like it.

Look, here it is giving birth to two tasty tenderloins:

All the while, as buddy Daniel put it "50% of the best deejays in town are here", just hanging out and playing records. Y'know. Casual. There was some rain at one point, but no one cared, we just huddled under some tents that were set up, and kept going.

The best part though, might have been the impromptu Slip' N' Slide "competition". That ruled. Everyone was already drenched anyway, and probably just as drunk, so why not?

After it dried out, we tapped the last keg, and got real nice in the backyard, letting the deejays take over.

Chris is a true champion. And while it might take a whole village to make it all happen the way it does, that dude is the chieftan of throwin' down.

Demon Dogs and Gay Witch Abortion.

2009-05-19T14:35:00.001-07:00

Beers. Buddies. Hot Dogs. Art. Metal.

Last Saturday all the stars aligned and the poo poo platter of bona fide gastrointestinal brutality occurred under the guise of Art-A-Whirl, the classic Northeast Minneapolis art crawl. I started the day at noon with a bloody mary and a beer back at Grumpy's Northeast, my favorite local haunt. Here's some of the photographic evidence:

OK buddies, here's a little primer. The Demon Dog is a creation made by Joe and Andrea Hoelzel at Creature Comfort Catering (highly recommended, look 'em up).

It's a big, all-beef frank slit down the center and filled with molten hot american cheese and diced jalapeno pepper. The dog is then tied together with butcher string and grilled to perfection over hot coals.

That's what a Demon looks like before loading it up with the goodies.

Schwenny rolled with the standard Brat. Seemingly delicious, and always an admirable choice. It was not however, a Demon Dog.

That's the beast from the bowels of hell, fully dressed and ready to destroy a weaker man's innards. If I were to characterize this dog like it was a living human interacting with me, I would politely suggest that he had just met his fucking maker.

Creature Comforts bottles a couple of special sauces, one of which is like an asian chili garlic with a whole lotta twang. The other was a carrot relish that cools things down a bit. I went with both, some old fashioned relish, a little kraut, and raw white onions. The flavors seep into the split belly like Han stuffing Luke into the Ton-Ton.

Needless to say, it was a taste sensation and a perfect foundation for a day of drinking and riding bikes to look at art.

I'm one handsome son of a bitch when I'm touching dicks with the dark side. In this case, a delicious Demon Dog.

Here's Gay Witch Abortion buffing some skin off my face. It was a dizzying display of sheer and unbridled metal freak-out goodness, that's for sure.

Surly Brewery set up shop as well, pouring some of Minnesota's finest.

Schwenny went back for round two, this time he got it right with a DEMON DOG!!!!

Here's the butt-end of one dog sure to inspire a tingle in your dingle. Yeah boners!

Pounding dogs like mason's building brick villages of old isn't just a man's game. Here's buddy Marisa showing her technique.

That's Jake's good buddy Al, visiting in town on probably the best weekend of the Spring thus far. We all finished the night at Flameburger. Al tried to leave town on a big dick note when he ordered the Mega Burger. Ingredients: one full pound of grade A American chuck, four slices of American cheese, four strips of thick cut bacon, all dragged through the garden.

He failed.

Jake and I gave the little buddy some help with a couple of monster bites. We couldn't let him leave town without his self respect intact.

Damn, I'm going to miss this town. Please forward on suggestions of where I can reproduce these good times in Seattle. Thanks.

Drinking with the Pig

2009-05-14T21:30:00.000-07:00

So this doesn't exactly have anything to do with hot dogs but there were buddies, drinking and products of the pork variety involved.

A couple weekends back we got together to try out cocktails Buddy Tania was working on. Might as well start with the doozer right off the bat:

Bacon Infused Vodka Bloody Mary. Garnished with Jalapeno Smoked Sausage, Cheddar Cheese, Jalapeno stuffed Olive, Cornichon and Pepperoncini.

This neon green sumbitch is a melon and vodka shot garnished with Prosciutto. You eat the Prosciutto and take the shot. Damn tasty.

We also had an Old Fashioned made with bacon infused bourbon and a root beer float with some coffee flavored tequila. But to balance out all them shits there was a round of Shotgunnin PBR's

That's Buddies Northcutt, the Helms boys, Rob Jones, who designs everything for the White Stripes, Raconteurs and now Dead Weather, and the dude with the knife you can't see is buddy Beruman who is a fancy ass wine expert. A good dude to know when you want to drink like an adult now and then.

The Wienery, Again...

2009-05-05T10:52:00.000-07:00

When buddies come to town, my whirlwind tour generally consists of the Triple Rock, the Wienery, any south Minneapolis haunt within stumbling distance of my place, i.e. the Hexagon (pretty much just the Hexagon, actually), the occasional sporting event, and often a skate park. So pardon me, dear guests of the future, if we're not making it to the Walker for a career retrospective of some post-modern video artist who's filmed himself gurgling a raw egg and spitting it out every morning for the past ten years. The Russian Art Museum is a whole different story though, we can go there.

This is either a stock photo from a youth shelter annual report or my pals Chresten and Stan waiting for their hot dogs.

Drive in Fries at the Wienery are second to none. Huge grease soaked spud strips topped with homemade chili (not that spicy unless you ask for it) and their own coleslaw. All killer, no filler.

The Mexicali is on the left and it consists of onions, cheese, baked beans, and sport peppers. The peppers were quite sporty, too. Had a whole lot of spunk too them. I'm not sure if the one on the right had a name or it's newer on the menu but it had tomato, mayo, pickle, lettuce, and mustard.

Here you will find Stan's Chicago and other dog I can't remember the name of. The journalistic standards of the this blog are really slipping. My apologies.

Hot dog eaters of the world unite and take over.

Wiener Dog Race Wiener

2009-04-25T15:41:00.000-07:00

My Sweet Old Lady and I took Rocketsauce and Tater out to the Wiener Dog Races today in Buda. Figgered it was a nice day and the dags would like some interaction with an clutch of little German pups. There was a mess of them shits. All sizes, standard, miniature, toy... Mostly well behaved except for a couple barky little fuckers. It was a mix of county fair and carnival even the Wienermobile was there. The only thing missing was the booze.

But to make up for that they smartly served up some tasty dogs. I promptly ordered up a chili and dressed it with plain mustard, dill relish and Meaner Wiener Chipotle sauce.

Some of the sauce they were slingin'

And the Wiener Race Wiener

Tacos.

2009-04-19T08:46:00.001-07:00

This is a re-post from Superbeast, but I thought it probably made more sense here at B & H. Carry on.

Instead of sitting around in my underwear waiting for emails, I decided to get the hell out of dodge and head down to Cozumel for a little relaxation. My friend Cha Cha and her Mom have a real, real nice place on the island with all the luxuries you would hope for as a wonderbread gringo.

Some things were a little differenter though. Here's what to expect if you head that way:

1. Don't flush your toilet paper. You have to throw it in a little waste basket. I couldn't relieve myself for two straight days because of this. Totally gross.

2. There is a brand of motorcycle that a lot of people ride in Cozumel. It's called an Enticer. It's also my new band name.

3. I almost died by way of sea urchin. Thanks for the head's up Cha Cha!

4. I might as well brush my teeth with onion and cilantro now.

5. Beware of this hustle: "I need money to help pay for my Alcoholics Anonymous anniversary cake." It is commonly used.

6. Go to any beach bar for a "Sunset Party," that's where all the white women at.

7. I drank things like "Carribean Vibes" and a "Happy Iguana." They are overrated and expensive. Stick to ice cold beer in a bottle.

8. There is never a crappy day in Cozumel. It's always awesome weather, or super awesome weather. I hear this changes during hurricane season, but I'm not buying it.

9. Despite all the news in the states about violent rampages by the infamous drug cartels, I was obnoxious the whole time I was there and nobody cut my head off and stuffed me in a trunk of a VW bug. The locals in Cozumel are all super friendly.

10. I'm convinced the mirrors in my house stateside are "skinny" mirrors, because I'm one fat sonofabitch in Mexico.

Here is a photo essay of my vacation:

Empenadas. Hand patted masa with frijoles, queso and beef.

Tacos from El Pique. Cha claims this is the best joint on the island. I wasn't arguing. Looks like we have a little beef, al pastor, and chuletas fresca. All with cheese.

This is the tropical fish in a mustard sauce. Cha Cha's island favorite from La Choza.

Chicken mole from La Choza.

Shrimp ceviche from La Choza.

An authentic tortilla soup for starters.

Carnitas for breakfast. I could eat this stuff all day long.

More Chuletes Fresca. Thinly sliced pork chops marinated in salt and pepper and fried on the flat top and chopped up. With onion, cilanto and a bit of manchego cheese. My favorite of the trip. They even give you the bone to nibble off of.

Panuchos. Shredded roasted chicken over a masa tortilla filled with refried black beans and topped with cabbage and jalopeno. Delicious!

Fresh fish platter from Chen Rio.

Some hot dogs and sausages at the super huge supermarket.

Al Pastor pizza. Yeah you heard that right. It was amazing. Very heavy duty. I had one slice.

Al Pastor tacos.

More Chuletas Fresca. I love this stuff!

The trip was amazing, and cheap! I spent a grand total of about $500 American dollars and that included my flight. It helps that I have friends that basically run Cozumel, but a savvy traveler should be able to get by pretty inexpensively. If you really want to be an "Ultimate Vacation Dude" you won't be able to survive on the pittance I spent. Shit, Tommy Bahama gear is expensive, and Sombreros aren't as cheap as one might think.

Oh, I almost forgot. My favorite tourist shirt I saw was "I might be shy, but I have a big dick."

Road Dogs

2009-04-15T21:19:00.000-07:00

Last week I hit six different states in as many days, stayed up 23 hours through part of the travels, schooled some whisky drinking Kentucky clowns on what happens to their barrels after they are spent, went to a pro basketball game, crashed a flight simulator (twice) and ate a few dogs. It was a pretty alright trip.

First up Memphis. Went to the Grizzlies game. Wasn't too stoked about it since they blow but they played Portland and Greg Oden got a little playing time so I could see if he really was as good as hyped when he went #1 in the draft a couple back. He was alright. Surprisingly Memphis was crushing Portland behind OJ Mayo's hot hand. A nice showing for that kid. Of course they choked and lost by a point in the last 4 seconds. Aside from the skank cheerleaders the real highlight was watching the game from the FedEx suite. That means free beer and crap. Standard catered fare, cheese plates, sausage, wings, etc. But much to my delight they had a hot dog bar. Fuckin A. So I get to kick back in leather seats, swig beers brought to me by the staff and chow on a dag. The only losers here were the Grizzlies fans. Man their team sucks. Ended up at Rendezvouz for some dry rub ribs and pork shoulder after the match. Now I know Memphis likes to claim to be BBQ kings but that shit hain't got nuthin' on Smitty's. One day Jake will talk about that for yinz.

Next stop Louisville. Didn't actually get any dogs here but I did crash another simulator. Those things are easy to take of and fly but landing is a bitch. The reason I feel the need to add Louisville to the story goes back to a documentary I have called Sandwiches You Will Like I highly recommend this flick and another Sebak did called A Hot Dog Program This quality viewing has made me want to plan vacations just to go eat the grub. One sammich in particular is the Hot Brown. Unfortunate name yes but delicious all the same. It happened that my stay in Lville was at the historic Brown Hotel The Hot Brown is a Kentucky standard made at a few places but as luck would have it I was sleepin upstairs from the joint that invented it. Open face turkey with mornay sauce, parmesan and bacon. It was all I had hoped. Prelimed that action with some sausage/apple/bean soup and backed all that up with some Derby Pie. The only thing I fucked up was ordering sweet tea instead of a mint julep.

Next in line Northcutt and I head off to Oklahoma City to drive a 26 ft Uhaul full of antique furniture back to Austin (there will be more to tell about this at a later date dear readers) At the Austin aeroport we decided it was time to get right. Three beers each and some really shitty brisket queso from Earl Campbell's bar and we are on the plane to Dallas.

Stewardess: Would you like something to drink?
Me: 4 vodkas please.
S: You realize this is a 30 min. flight?
Me: Are you saying I need to order my second round now?
S: Oh Pumpkin there isn't going to be a second round.

Beautiful flight up and down just like the vodkas. Northcutt and I kill a little time in the Dallas aeroport bar with buddy Sam Adams then back on the plane to OKC.

Steward: Would you like something to drink?
Me: 4 vodkas please.
S: You realize this is a 30 min. flight?

The dude didn't seem as cool as the chick on the previous flight so I just took the vodkas and Northcutt and I commenced to imbibing. My sweet old lady picked us up and took us straight to Coit's for some dogs. See how I brought it back around?

We order up some draft root beers, four chilis and two cornys. So good we went back for two more chilis.

Last but not least we hit Johnnie's also in OKC. This here is the #13. Split, grilled red hot with chili and cheese that is closest to Velveeta. Awesome.

Thee Mighty Cone

2009-04-15T20:36:00.000-07:00

About a block from my pad there is an Airstream with a giant spinning cupcake on it. It's called "Hey Cupcake" Cute right? Guess what, they sell cupcakes. You know what else? They suck. If you are only doing one thing you better do it really fucking well. But I digress.

This trailer sits on an empty lot. Right around South By Southwest this year an army of trailers cropped up in the lot hawking everything from paninis to popcorn. None of this stuff was of interest really but one day whilst walking Rocketsauce and Tater to Jo's for an Iced Turbo I finally looked a little closer at The Mighty Cone and noticed it was run by Hudson's On The Bend.

Now before you get into the rest of this story take a second to go peruse Hudson's menu. It's the only place where I have eaten this fabulous array of animals in one sitting:

Rattlesnake cakes with pistachio crust and chipotle cream
Shot of spicy lobster bisque
Escargot with hearts of palm and asparagus
Venison with lobster with guava sour cherry sauce
Ruby Trout with mango habanero aioli
Chocolate-chili-coffee rubbed Elk with Gulf Coast Crab and lime chipotle beer blanc
Rabbit tenders, Smoked Quail and Achiote Marinated Buffalo.

Given that The Mighty Cone was affiliated with this kinda of stellar meat fandango I decided to give it a shot. I was fully prepared to order up the hot and crunchy chicken avacado thingy they offered but right when I was about to make my selection I saw the Cone Dog on the menu. Well shit there it was. Grass fed Venison dressed up in a goofy cone. One please with a side of chili dusted fries. Since I still wasn't paying complete attention I really didn't know what the cone was. I was kinda hoping for a waffle. Now don't get excited it wasn't a waffle it was a tortilla. But it was a tortilla stuffed with some pretty tasty sausage and slaw that kept Rocketsauce's attention while I ate it on my porch chased with a nice PBR. Not too shabby for walking about a block and buying dinner out of a trailer.

So welcome to the hood fruitcakes Rocketsauce and I will be back!

Bacon Wrapped Venison and Buddies.

2009-04-05T17:30:00.000-07:00

I decided to have a little BBQ for the hell of it this past weekend. A few good buddies showed up, like Jake "the Prodigal Son" Lancaster, John "Yahtzee" Nussbaum, Schwenny, The Mayor, The Dude, and Kent and Kellar the creative duo behind the internet...the whole damn internet.

I whipped up a batch of bacon-wrapped venison sausages along with some homemade salsa. The salsa went quicker than Carl Lewis jacked on human growth hormones, and I only got one of the sausages. Never fear, I also loaded up the grill with a bunch of all-beef franks and the world's largest can of Baked Beans. Rumor has it that the can of beans was swiped from a homeless shelter. I prefer to believe it came from Costco.

After all the eats and beers we headed down to Artcrank, "the poster party for bike people." The show was cool, but super packed per usual. I got a little claustrophobic so we headed over to Cuzzy's where Jake proceeded to show us how tough he was by doing push-ups with a cardboard boner on his head. Just another wacky Saturday night.

I'll be able to wash that dick off my hand, but Jake will always be a dickhead.

Photos courtesy of Mike Haeg.

I'll let Jake tell the story

2009-03-28T18:11:00.001-07:00

Flameburger

2009-03-22T16:32:00.000-07:00

A man cannot survive on hot dogs alone. Sometimes even a wizard as well-traveled as myself needs to eat other foods, other foods like hamburgers. Good buddy and comedian extraordinaire Chris "Maddoo" Maddock let me in on a little local secret called Flameburger. Let's just say there are a lot of things I've learned in my life a lot less valuable than that little nugget of information.

Flameburger is a family owned diner in Columbia Heights that first opened its doors to the grease deprived in 1955. It boasts ridiculous eats like the two pound double mega burger, a local legend. The atmosphere in the diner is straight country, pictures of mallard ducks adorn the walls, and there is very likely a small time criminal and or used car salesmen selling a load of bullshit to whoever happens to sit across the counter from him.

After watching Maddoo's Death Comedy Jam at Grumpys, we decided to close the night on a greasy note and run the gauntlet of Central Avenue to Flameburger. The place was pretty quiet at 2 in the morning on a Wednesday night, except for the small time criminal and or used car salesmen who sat across from us. He had a little buddy with him that looked like he was still wearing his Perkins manager smock and name tag. They talked some serious business in hushed tones, while Chris and I mercilessly laughed at their gold chains.

Back to the food. The grub at Flameburger is made to order in front of you on a huge griddle. I opted for the four ounce California Flameburger with bacon and cheese and a side of fries. The four ounce is the smallest size they make, but it was easily as big as any burger I've tangled with in recent years.

I cannot begin to describe how delicious these burgers were. I have to admit, I've been on a Kale and Kombucha cleanse since eating there, but it was well worth it. Maddoo and I didn't speak for 15 straight minutes while were stuffing our pie-holes full of Flameburger.

Word to the wise, I received a hot tip that Flameburger is a place that cops keep there eyes on in the wee hours, so mind your p's and q's and don't drink and drive.

One Hungry Gringo

2009-03-13T16:01:00.000-07:00

Hola mi amigos. What we have here is an all-beef Hebrew National frank, fried in a corn tortilla with cojito cheese, jalapeno, diced onion, and copious amounts of fresh cilantro. Add a little refried black beans on top, and fresh guacamole on the side and you have a real fiesta.

The pictures don't do these dogs justice, but they were delicious. I wish I would have had a cold Pacifico to wash it all down, and a beautiful sun-kissed chica on my arm, but tapwater and a gay pit bull will do in a pinch.

This feast was inspired by Jake's pics from his trip to Sturgis. Olay!

Some pigs is for eatin', some pigs ain't.

2009-02-17T23:29:00.000-08:00

Kingsford Goes to the Beach - For more funny videos, click here

It's been a while since we've talked about the other fundamental element for good times...Buddies.

Meet Kingsford. Not only is he just the greatest little buddy a buddy could ask for, but he's made of pork!

I would walk a sandy beach with this little piggy any day.

p.s. I also find it odd that our little buddy is named after charcoal. Hmmm...

Sausage 101. Or How I Learnt To Link Like A Pro.

2009-02-16T21:34:00.000-08:00

Buddy Northcutt and I decided to take this sausage making kick to the next level and learn from a dude who knows his shit. That dude is Jesse Griffiths and he owns and operates Dai Due. Aside from the awesome suppers he puts together with all local and seasonal foods he teaches some sweet ass classes. For example we may take one in March on how to dress a whole hog and then prepare it for a Boucherie dinner. That's right, the whole dang pig.

But for this class we made sausages, glorious sausages. 6 to be exact. Maple breakfast, Chorizo, country-style sausages made of bison, veal and pork, Boudin Blanc, dry-cured Saucissons Sec, and sweet Italians. Jesse had some excellent tips that make a lot of sense looking back at the stuff we've been screwing up. The main thing is we make them shits and zippity doo right to the grill. Gotta poach them puppies.

Here's a few pics of our learnins:

Spices measured out for each sausage we made. If you have your recipes down it's best to mix the spice in prior to the grind.

If you are going to make sausage links you have to pick up one of these. Holy shit it rules. It can link 10 pounds in about 2 minutes cranked by hand. As badass as the kitchen aid is this stuffs way better and way faster.

twistin the porkvealalo

the Dry Cure Saucissons Sec. These take about a month to fully cure.

And last but not least the Boudin Blanc. A nicely spiced pork sausage that is ground twice with a fine blade and then mixed like batter with cream and breadcrumbs before casing. Poached then pan fried. We ate these with some fresh mustard Jesse made out of one of my favorite ale's, Fireman's 4.

Greek Dog Showdown An Introduction

2009-02-10T09:54:00.000-08:00

Sioux City, Iowa. County seat of Woodbury. Population 85,000, approximately. Formerly the nation's vortex for livestock sales. Birthplace of Deep Purple and James Gang guitar virtuoso Tommy Bolin. Permanent resting place of US Army Sergeant Charles Floyd, only Lewis and Clark expedition member to perish marching westward, cause: appendicitis. And, apropos this esteemed web log's mission, the home of three Coney Island style hot dog slinging restaurants owned mysteriously by families of Greek origin.

To understand the confluence of these Grecian owned and operated Coney Island hot dog shoppes in a place as random as Sioux City, one must first look north and east over a couple states to Detroit, Michigan, not Coney Island, New York, as you might suspect. But first, for clarity's sake, we'll define a Coney Island Hot Dog as the "heartland's" hot dog, a pork and beef mix with a natural casing placed in a steamed bun, topped with meat sauce, diced raw onions and yellow mustard. The cheese debate is far too dicey to get into here, so we'll just leave it alone.

Various Michigan wiener outlets lay claim to birthing the Coney Island dog, here according to that bastion of verifiably accurate information Wikipedia:

"Coney Islands are a unique type of Greek restaurant that originated in Detroit. Several restaurants claim to have invented the name and concept. Claimants include American Coney Island [1] in downtown Detroit, established by Greek immigrant Gust Keros in 1917, with the then-owner contending that he had bought a similarly configured chili dog at the well known New York park. The first Coney Islands were started by Keros and his brother, who got into an argument quite soon after and split their restaurant into two parts--the present day American and Lafayette Coney Islands which are next door to each other, and who to this day argue about which is the "original." Similar claims are made by Todoroff's in Jackson, Michigan."

Still others will say the Coney Island was created in Flint. But until I make it there to interview the locals, I'll have to take Wikipedia's word for it.

Still, we don't know why the hot dog. It does not appear to be a foodstuff of traditional Grecian or Macedonian origin. How they glommed on to the hot dog and effectively made the sale of it a honest and money-making enterprise is still a perplexing mystery.

Without digging too deep, we can safely assume some Detroit exile of Greek descent made it to Sioux City with a business plan in mind that involved hot dogs. A big thanks to that person, you made mine and thousands, possibly millions of others childhoods, gastronomically pleasing.

And so it became our mission, in late 2008, to sample the wares of each of these restaurants. Attending, tasting, and pondering were friends new and old; Abigail, Ann Marie, Joe, Al, Kaz, and your faithful correspondent. This is what we found.

Greek Dog Showdown Part I

2009-02-10T09:20:00.000-08:00

George's No. 1 Hot Dog Shoppe

If a hand drawn sign in dire need of some paint and the archaized use of the word "shop" don't scream "a fine place to hunker down with some dogs for lunch on Friday," I don't know what does.

Perhaps it was because this was our first stop on the Showdown circuit and your correspondent was quite hungry. Maybe it was the tiny bottles of Coke that won over my heart. It could have been the owner George, coming to speak with me at length about his establishment (he's been in business for 36 years) and the great care he takes in finding the best dogs in the midwest (they're processed for him exclusively at a small locker somewhere in South Dakota the location of which he said he could not divulge). Or maybe because they were just that spectacularly good, that George's No. 1 Hot Dog Shoppe on Hamilton Boulevard in Sioux City, Iowa, right down from the Wendy's that used to have the weird taco buffet, has won, for your correspondent at least, the title best Coney Island hot dog in the greater Siouxland area. Congrats, George (I wanted to write "congrats" using Greek characters but don't know how to do that so good ol' English will have to do). A round of Ouzo shots are in order.

Some high-level hot dog discussion happening right there. George explained to me how he asks for his dogs to be processed at a smaller diameter than his competitors. I do not know why.

Buddies Kaz and Abby get busy on what would turn out to be a kick ass afternoon full of suds and encased meats.

The importance of a steamed bun cannot be overstated.

Fat and happy, your correspondent and a judge who will remain anonymous (Alexander Carl Dickman) look forward to the next stop.

Greek Dog Showdown Part II

2009-02-09T13:40:00.001-08:00

Milwaukee Wiener House No. 1

Although ostensibly named with expansion in mind, there is no municipal record of a second Milwaukee Wiener House. And there needn't be. The sheer warmth and comfort exuded by it's drab green booths and walls, its plastic serving trays emblazoned with the House logo, its somehow pleasant aroma of processed swine and bakery fresh buns provided by the w/in spitting distance Metz "Old Home" bakery, its hardworking clientele and its process-driven, if not a bit curt staff would be nearly impossible to replicate.

If one were to associate a mood with the Milwaukee Wiener House, it would be something close to feeling as a small child does when he's assembled a fort made of sleeping bags and pillows and couch cushions where inside his new fort he has all his toy guns, a bag of marshmallows, his imaginary buddy Frankie and a peek hole where he can peer out at the TV occasionally to watch his favorite cartoons. Imagine that but with Miller High Life and hot dogs.

So why does the Milwaukee Wiener House No. 1 finish third in the Greek Dog Showdown of 2008? The dogs, duh. They seemed too soft and spice-less, of a grade fit only for our nation's most lowly public mental institutions. The chili and buns however deserve high marks.

Some would disagree with your correspondents assessment. Case in point, Spanish Johnny, poised to bite off the hand of anyone who dare touch his weiner(s).

A "Barker" and Hamm's still life. If there are any talented painters looking at this, I'll pay top dollar to see this hanging framed on my wall.

Wish you were here!

Greek Dog Showdown Part III

2009-02-09T13:15:00.000-08:00

Coney Island

In a strip mall that has seen it's third or fourth makeover, flanked by a bowling alley and a Hy-Vee foodstore, sits Coney Island, quietly churning out, in your correspondent's humble opinion, the greater Siouxland area's second best coney dog.

Since my first visit to Coney Island probably five or six years ago, the eatery has been staffed by two people: the owner and his mother. Grandmother, possibly. He does the cooking and takes your order while grandma delivers to your table the dogs and onion chips (definitely get onion chips). If she speaks English at all, it's of the broken kind; "You now enjoy eat" and such. And you do. A marked difference from George's and Milwaukee is the deep fryer. Onion chips and fries really do add a nice touch.

Note: Coney Island was originally the third stop on the itinerary but what was supposed to be a brief respite at a local watering hole before put the skids on that. Through sheer determination, I was able to complete the trifecta a few weeks later.

Wimmer's Buddies

2009-02-09T11:14:00.000-08:00

With a buddy visitng from points West (including Colorado and South Dakota), it seemed only fitting to serve up some Wimmer's (which are distributed pentagonally in southern South Dakota, southeast Wyoming, northeast Colorado, most of Iowa, the entirety of Nebraska, and all of Minnesota although possibly under the banner Ambassador Sausages®, which they recently purchased according to their website and CEO Dave Wimmer). The Wimmer's is a beef and pork mixed link with a nearly impenetrable natural casing. They don't snap so much as crunch. Which is quite good although it may not sound so.

As far as I can tell, Wimmer's can only be purchased by the dozen. And they are LINKED. How much fun is that? I'll tell you, it's a lot of fun.

TRON dogs. We only boil our weiner's over electric blue flame here in South Minneapolis.

Buddy Joe aka Spanish Johnny aka Buster Slacks put the meat sauce together and used chili powder, finely diced onion, water, and meat. Plochman's provided the mustard.

Cooking and eating Wimmer's will really wear a guy out. We had also ridden horses for most of the day (I rode more of a "pony" but it was still pretty wild) so that may have also contributed to us being wiped out.

International Ryan Falch Day: The Wienery.

2009-01-31T13:12:00.000-08:00

Some guys will bend over backwards for a broad, some guys will get fancy hair cuts, and buy jeans with embroidered dragons all over them, and some guys will even take up Pilates and Bikram Yoga to find their inner douche. Our good buddy Ryan Falch flew for 18 hours and cashed in a Swiss bank account of Yen to come back to the motherland and experience some goddamn, good old fashioned 'Merican food. First stop, The Wienery of course.

There's the man of the hour, with newcomer buddy, and regular man about town Joe. The Wienery was packed as usual, but we were lucky enough to find a seat by the door. While we waited for our hot links, Ryan caught up on some local news and we contemplated Chinese eats like scorpions and cocoons. Yeah, you heard that right.

Never a loss for charm...and dust, here we have the patron saint of the Wienery. I call him Old Dusty Buck.

Owner Pat was running the place all by his lonesome per usual, but he still had time to tell me about the wonders of a real Mexican hot dog. I dropped some science about how the blog was receiving national acclaim, and thus far we've given him 3 solid if not outstanding reviews. He seemed pleased as a giant kettle full of all-beefs boiled over violently behind him.

That's the Drive-Thru and Briny Dog, with a mess of fresh cut fries. Mmm, mmm good.

So here's the skinny. I rolled with my personal favorite, the Drive-Thru dog. This beauty is locked and loaded with freshly made cole slaw on top of baked beans and shredded cheddar cheese. The sweet and salty of this little bastard is what makes it so damn delicious.

I also hit a home run with a new fave, The Briny Dog. The Briny comes with a pickle, sour kraut, relish, and giardinna. I got this one Mexicali style. That's bacon wrapped for you gringos. The Briny was a little salty (hence the name), but still delicious. I think next time I'll try it with cheese.

The next day, we hit up another local gem. The Jasmine Deli on Eat Street. A good Banh Mi sandwich is one of my favorite eats, and the Jasmine's pork Banh Mi is a real face melter. That melting pot of the French and Vietnamese was an act of god if you love a good sandwich.

Sturgis Dog House

2009-01-29T14:02:00.000-08:00

Sturgis, South Dakota can seem rather ghostly over the months of December and January. Vance & Hines pipes are silenced and turgid "mama's" breasts clothed by strong prairie winds and occasionally punishing snowfall. Winter out here can be a pitiless bitch. But a deep and affecting warmth comes easy dear reader, and it's yours for the taking at 2120 Lazelle Street where the "Not Yet World Famous" Sturgis Dog House awaits you with arms open like a bakery fresh poppy seed bun.

Although my journalistic cover was blown by a buddy who is a regular at the Dog House (not his fault), they were nonetheless incredibly friendly and accommodating wiener slinging small business owners. I was even able to meet the gentleman who runs the joint and tell him what a fine establishment he maintains. And the hot dogs? They're all beef, natural casing wieners that snap like Joe Theisman's femur. Often a wienery will rely on accoutrements to make the dog while forgetting the dog itself. Not the Sturgis Dog House--they pride themselves on some top shelf beef and it does not disappoint. And with a menu 13 dogs deep, there is something there for everyone.

Above you will find, from L. to R.:The Wild Bill Mexi Dog served in a deep fried tortilla, The Devils Tower served with deep fried jalapenos, pepperjack cheese, and salsa, and the Deadwood Chili Dog. They were all quite tasty but the Devils Tower really shined for me.

When you next head west, whether on two wheels, four, or eighteen, pop into the Sturgis Dog House to keep that engine running.

Game Day Dogs and a couple more

2009-01-13T13:57:00.000-08:00

Well even though the NCAA championship didn't end up my way it was still a good buddy hang out. Really winning the Heisman is a curse if you are playing for the championship. But oh well there will be more games.

So my sweet old lady brought some chili back from a road trip and we decided no better excuse needed than football and buddies to cook it up and spread it on. Two styles hit the stove. Schwab's Back Home Chili and 4 Star. Schwab's comes from Yancy's favorite home town hotdoggery called Coit's. It's pretty alright.

Chili bricks!

Lookit that grease!

Thee Dags. Simple, Chili Cheese Mustard

And I made a trip up the road to Lucky Dog for some Chicago Dog action. We just don't have good Chicago Dogs here so when I see a claim of one I have to check it out. Of course when I got there I sorta copped out and had a hot polish dressed with Chicago. All the elements for the bun and dressings were fresh and tasty and the sausage was not bad. For something advertised as super hot it coulda had more of a bite. Still good for a Texas joint. The chili dog was right on time albeit a little mustard heavy.

The Dogs That Were Not There

2009-01-07T12:28:00.000-08:00

Let's say you're in a far Western US town of semi-lawlessness and you lose a member of your posse in a sea of people the second the ball drops to ring in a new year. You can not find this person for hours. You worry they've been taken away by wild dogs, miners, or worse yet, the authorities. The best thing to do is wander into the corner bar, tip back a couple of cold ones, and order up the two lone weiners you see behind the bar glowing like God himself as they ride the hot dog ferris wheel to heaven. You'll hatch a plan. You'll find your man. Trust me on this one.

Roscoe's and Sausages

2009-01-02T16:58:00.000-08:00

I just downloaded a different camera and it had this pic from Roscoe's in LA I forgot I took. Them's some sweet yard bird and waffles they whip up there.

The other pics are the following fine eats. On the menu was a straight stretch chili dog. I made the chili sauce with some browned onions/garlic and good old greasy ground beef. Some chili powder, cumin, tomato paste and a little low rent ketchup for a bit of sweetness.

I attempted a Samosa Sausage but I still need to work on that. Curried potatoes and peas need something to make them act like a sausage. Dressed it with mango lime chutney, spicy peanut sauce and some Paneer cheese. The flavors were there but it was a mess. Besides the delicious chili dog the Muffuletta Sausage came out real nice. The grind was Hot Capicola, Genoa Salami, and Mortadella. I added some ham too. Before casing I diced up some Mozzarella and tossed it into the mix. Dressed with Dijon, Provolone and an olive tapenade made from green and black olives, Giardiniera, pimentos and some spices and shit.

Look at that sweet deli action

Dogs of the chili, NOLA and Indian varieties

Arthur Bryants

2008-12-28T11:05:00.001-08:00

Oh hey bros. I just got back from burying my Grandpa in Kansas City, Missouri. No tears here, Ol' Bob Slegman was a good man, and he lived a long life over 94 years. He was a horseman, fox hunter, clothier, and one of the best storytellers I've ever met. Of course one of the coolest things about Grandpa Bob is that he loved good BBQ and soul food. Thus every time I've traveled to KC we would visit a number of their finest BBQ and soul food joints. I've been to so many of them since I was about 8 years old that the list would be too long to post here. That's a lot of ribs, buddies.

I consider a KC trip to be a pilgrimage of pork. A sojourn of sauce. A gathering of burnt ends amongst friends.

Anyway, Arthur Bryants is a fucking temple of deliciousness. I don't want to hear anything about Texas beef ribs, or Memphis sauce, or god forbid some heresy about Minnesota even coming close to bumping uglies with KC BBQ. Deal?

Arthur Bryants is known worldwide, but the original location is still nestled in the 'hood. Of course the neighborhood looks a lot nicer than the one I live in, but just to acknowledge the street cred I captured a couple of 40oz buddies perched in front of the restaurant, likely waiting for their gorging BBQ fan drinkers.

That's my plate stacked full of burnt ends, pulled pork, and amazing pork short ribs. I also grabbed KC's finest Boulevard Pale Ale in a frosty mug. I prefer the original Bryants sauce which isn't sweet at all, and packed with gritty spices. They also carry two newer varieties of sauce that are sweet and thus easier for white people to enjoy. Pussies.

A 2lb stack of delicious pork ribs. That's a lot of piggy for this piggy. One of the best things about Arthur Bryants is ordering by the pound. The longer you wait in line, the longer this seems like a great idea. I think we ordered something like 12lbs of meat plus the beans, slaw and beers we threw down.

Every table at Bryants comes stocked with a loaf of Wonder Bread. I remember going there once when I was about 8 years old. My Dad asked the man behind the counter why they use such shitty bread when they served such great ribs and sauce. The gheri-curled man replied "Dat ain't bread, dems napkins". Fucking brilliant.

Another view of the original Arthur Bryants. They added a fancy new parking lot, but you're still going to wait 45 minutes in line over lunch time.

Ribs are my favorite food on the planet. I like ribs more than hot dogs, tacos and bacon, and I really love hot dogs, tacos and bacon. I guess the moral of the story is that I like a lot of different kinds of food, especially when you're stuffing your face with a buddy at your side.

Merry Christmas Buddies

2008-12-25T20:38:00.001-08:00

Hope you and yours are having a gooder. I'm on the couch with my squeeze watching some James Bond and tossing back some coldies. Merry Christmas indeed.

The Kobe and The Chili Hole

2008-12-25T19:35:00.000-08:00

Duders, here's the last two dog related eats I had before heading back to Austin. First down on Venice Beach at Jody Maroni's Sausage Kingdom. I got a giant Kobe Beef dog and saw Harry Perry the roller skating guitar turban guy. I'm not sure there is a huge difference in a Kobe Beef dog and a nice Vienna except cows that drink beer and get massaged in sake but it was still pretty tasty. Nice gimmick though.

Jody

Kobe

Harry

Then I got this chili hole at a place called Barney's Beanery. A joint where you could trade your license plate for a pint, where supposedly Janis Joplin had her last drink before kicking it and where Jim Morrison got bounced for pissing on the bar. We sat in a booth.

This was one of those trendy sourdough bowls filled with shit that seems to be the hip way to serve up soup and crap. This was stuffed with some really decent chili and diced dogs. Just like being a kid again except with pints.

Two In The Pink's

2008-12-22T23:47:00.000-08:00

Made it to the Famous Pink's today. When it's 50 degrees out and wet people don't really get out and stand in line in L.A. Which was fine by me. This is a pretty decent joint but it's no Hot Doug's, so I'm glad I didn't have a Hot Doug's line which I was fully prepared for from all the stories.

That said fellas, Pink's does have some intriguing shit on the menu. Like the Martha Stewart Dog, a 10" Stretch Dog, relish, onions, bacon chopped tomatoes, sauerkraut & sour cream or the THE OZZY SPICY DOG, a Spicy Polish Dog, Nacho cheese, American cheese, grilled onions, guacamole & chopped tomatoes and so on. But today for my two I went for the BACON CHILI CHEESE DOG topped w/3 strips of bacon, tomatoes & cheese and the PASTRAMI REUBEN DOG - Pastrami, mustard, Swiss cheese & sauerkraut. One of the most amazing things was how the bacon grease met the chili grease and dripped right off the corner of the cheese slice. The little puddle was like those art/light show things hippies used to do with coloured water, oil and an overhead projector. I don't think I've ever seen grease suspended in more grease.

Behold:

I figger the test of most places is the standard chili cheese and if I was to throw bacon on top of that how could I go wrong? And truth be told it was pretty dang good. The Pastrami dog I was hoping would be an actual sausage made of pastrami but it was just their regular dog covered with flat grilled pastrami, a slice of swiss and some kraut. Tasty enough.

My squeeze got the 10 inch stretch and her sister picked up a plain chili. All in all a nice sampling despite most my buddies who had been there telling me "Pink's is Wack."

Original Tommy's and a Simpson's Dog

2008-12-21T11:20:00.000-08:00

Hey Buddies. I'm out in not so warm LA for the holidays so I thought I'd post up a couple joints I've made it to so far. First on the way from the airport we stopped at The Original Tommy's where everything comes with chili.

Now it's a rare occasion when I wouldn't want everything covered with chili but this hain't the best chili you've ever had. As you can see there was a lot of pretty bland goop on the dag and fries. The buns were ok not super soft like they should be but not totally dried out. Thankfully they did the dag right. It had the right snap that kept this from being a complete dog fail.

This next stop was at Universal Studios. Right outside the Simpson's ride, which I must say is one of the most awesome things I've ever been on. Theme parks aren't my gig but we were taking my 8 year old niece so it was pretty fun. Here's a tip. If there is a retarded long line for the backlot tour hop over into the Spanish speaking line. We only waited 5 min instead of 45 and even though we hardly understood any of the tour guide they had some rad music. And since I was sitting on the back car the Norman Bates dude almost stabbed me. I actually had to duck.

Look just like if you were getting cartoon dogs on the show!

Perfectly acceptable plain dog. Longer than the bun with nothing to dress it up but mustard and sweet relish. And while I love a cold beer I kinda felt like a dirt bag walking around all those kids slugging back hooch.

I'm off to Roscoe's for chicken and waffles but I'll hit a few more dog stands in the next couple days.

Brothers in guts. For Dad's day.

2008-12-17T23:29:00.000-08:00

That's Dave. Friend of buddy Nate. Part-time buddy of the Brew. Hanging out with his brothers and Dad. About to fire up the grill. I think we should all call our Dads and tell them how fucking awesome they are for teaching us about meats.

Buddies, Bloody Mary's, BBQ, Bacon Waffles and Brad

2008-12-16T21:47:00.000-08:00

I went to Smitty's today and it reminded me of some pics from a previous trip that you fellas should appreciate.

Buddy Brad, also known as Whisky Beard, came down to visit from OKC. Brad is a whiz at the barbecuing. So much so that bands like Magnolia Electric Co. and Ladyhawk from Vancouver B.C. will route their tours through that crap hole Oklahoma City just to eat in his back yard.

After their most recent show there Ladyhawk were nice enough to let Brad get in the van down to Austin so he could then get some meat in his belly. Once in Austin Ladyhawk delivered the rock and we hung out till the wee hours talking about metal and slugging back hooch. The next couple days were spent slugging back more hooch and talking less about metal and more about meat. Delicious, delicious meat (but still plenty about metal. I mean c'mon it's metal)

First off this is Brad with one of my Bloody Mary's

Next this was breakfast. Bacon Waffles and Brad's Atomic Donkey Turds which are cheese stuffed, bacon wrapped jalapenos. You read that right, BACON in the waffles. I won't make them any other way and neither should you.

Enough of this "most important meal of the day" nonsense, this is Smitty's. Open flame pit on the floor as you walk in.

Buddies Brad and Ladyhawk surveying the take. Just look at that beautiful pile of meats. No forks at this joint.

And since this site is about the tubed variety of animals here is a sweet close up of the Smitty's Sausage.

Another Saturday Sausage Party

2008-12-14T16:05:00.000-08:00

You know when you are pumping ground meat into pig guts there isn't a single thing anyone can say that can't be construed as a dick joke. Oddly enough making sausage and cooking for 4 hours the dick jokes don't get old. It's like we are still retarded teenagers but reality is we are just retarded adults who drink a lot and laugh at stupid shit...all. the. time.

But for a bunch of tards we can make some pretty mean eats. We started the night off with a version of Poutine. Seeing as I have only had it once in Montreal about 10 years ago I couldn't exactly remember the gravy. Buddy Northcutt managed to pretty much make good ol' KFC gravy from scratch. It wasn't quite the traditional Canuck brown gravy but it was damn tasty so that's what we ate. And we ate the hell out of it. Waffle fries, cheese curds and gravy, fuck yeah.

Now enough of this Canadian grabass let's talk sausages. First up I marinated 6 ribeyes and a pound of hickory smoked peppered bacon for about 4 hours, ground it up and got to stuffin'.

These were deelish. Dressed with whiskey butter (!!!), Amish Bermuda Onion cheddar and crispy onion strings. Other offerings for the evening were a spicy sweet chili teriyaki dog with a spicy goat cheese sauce made by guest buddy Adrian who is working on a documentary called "Slow Food" about organic and local foodstuffs. Northcutt whipped out a portobello, roasted garlic, balsamic soaked Quinoa and shallot "sausage" dressed with a roasted red and yellow bell, pear chutney and topped with marjoram, basil, sugar and black pepper crusted Chèvre rounds. And finally, for good measure, I tossed out a BBQ brisket sausage dressed with a mustard base hot pepper/garlic, Yukon gold/sweet potato salad, Butterkase cheese, baby dill slices and Habanero BBQ Sauce

Here they be. Portobello on the left, Ribeye in the middle, Brisket on the right, Teriyaki on top

And just so you guys don't think I've gone full on fruity I grabbed a pretty alright dog outside Home Depot today on a run to get some shit to work on our roof. You know man stuff. And some potting soil to re-pot some plants. Wait..shit I've said too much..

p.s. it was 76° here today. I think we may have to have a Wizzard New Year's Eve in the back yard if this weather holds up.

Big Business. Buddies. Bullwinkle's Famous Dogs.

2008-12-14T10:05:00.000-08:00

So a couple of buddies had made plans to eat some dogs and then rock. No gals allowed.

Much to our dismay, the Wienery was closed on Saturday night. The night that Big Business and the Melvins were to grace the stage of the Triple Rock for a face melting rock show of monumental proportions.

Ol' Mancaster got a hot tip about some dog eatin' at Bullwinkles, a West Bank college town luminary. Screw the Wienery and their unpredictable hours, off to Bullwinkles!

Bullwinkles claims to serve the Twin Cities finest Coney Island Hot Dog. Jake gave it the thumbs up, but our personal favorite was the Minnesota Chili Dog. Holy christ! That beast had more girth than a shut-in at a Piggly Wiggly!

Just a couple of bros holding their babes proud. Where's the cigar!

We both threw caution to the wind and dangled our dusty nuts over the Minnesota Chili Dog. Jake followed that with the Coney Island, and I got the Chicago Style Dog. One round of tots to share please.

That's the Chicago and the Minnesota Chili. I thought the Chicago was one of the best I've had outside of Chi-town. The Minnesota Chili was like a demon sent from the orifices of hell. So bad, but so damn good.

Jake rolled strong with the Minnesota Chili, and the Twin Cities Coney Island. Two thumbs up!

DESTROY!

RAPE! PILLAGE!

All in all, we thought Bullwinkles was pretty damn delicious. 4 dogs, a pitcher of beer, and a side of tater tots for ten bucks each. Hot damn!

I have to admit that I've never been so uncomfortably stuffed in my life. I bitched all the way to the Big Biz show and couldn't even consume my Tecate once I got there. Not sure what the issue was, but let's just say I stretched the boundaries of abdominal fortitude.

Read more about the Big Biz/Melvins show over at Superbeast.

Crif Buddy

2008-12-08T14:15:00.001-08:00

What is the best part of New York City's Crif Dogs? Enjoying them with a buddy! I have about 9 pictures of this dog and he's chewing in every one. Must be some good dogs.

After we'd both made it through our two dogs a piece we thought would fill us up (and crepes from a couple hours prior but that's a whole different story), we were not quite full. Hmmm. What to do, what to do. Easy, order one and have it cut in half. I give you the Chihuahua; a bacon wrapped dog covered with avocadoes, sour cream, jalapenos and their homemade salsa.

Shared. Savored. Salame!

Getting Criffy

2008-12-08T13:47:00.000-08:00

If you're out wandering around the East Village on the island of Manhattan and look up to see a hanging sign of a dark red weiner with the phrase "eat me" emblazoned in yellow type across its flesh, you've made it to the one and only Crif Dog's.

Step inside and you're once again reminded of the dog-centric Crif culture with this objet de arte.

Above you will find the "Tsunami." It's a house dog, bacon wrapped, with teriyaki, pineapple and green onions. It is deliciously sweet and salty, much like a Hawaiian pizza.

As far as chili dogs go, this was like the Bret Saberghagen of chili dogs; perfectly suitable and decent in the clutch, but definitely not a superstar.

I'd been here before and this trip was just as delightful. And I was pretty drunk so these really hit the spot.

Get Criffy!

"You've Come to the Finest Restaurant in Toledo."

2008-12-08T12:51:00.000-08:00

Even if you're able to, I imagine there's not a lot to see on the Ohio Turnpike. That's why I decided to get off it and head into Toledo; past the McDonald's, Fazoli's, Hardee's, Starbuck's, Taco Bell, Perkins, Bob Evan's, Steak 'n' Shake, Burger King, Dairy Queen, and Subway to Rudy's Hot Dog, self-proclaimed King of the Hot Dog's and a family tradition since 1920.

Also known for their chili mac (an Ohio thing that will get it's own article someday but it's basically spaghetti noodles topped with chili and cheese and onions, I think) and burgers, Rudy's offers hot dogs with only three toppings; mustard, chili, and raw onions. I got "the works" with fries and a Coke. The weiners are eerily similar to those found at both George's Hot Dog Shoppe and the Milwaukee Weiner House in Sioux City, Iowa (all of which are owned by Greeks, btw, weird, I'll have to get to the bottom of that soon with some hot dog sleuthing). And just like those found elsewhere, they are some tasty treats for the road weary. A steamed and heavenly soft bun. Chili sauce that is nearly sweet. Finely chopped white onions. A most likely not all beef wiener that definitely does the trick. Put all that together for a completely amazing couple of dogs.

As I finished up my dogs and sipped on my Coke my buddy Lee rang. I told him I was in Toledo eating some dogs, you know, no big deal, and told him I'd have to call him back. When I hung up two older couples said they had overheard me and that I was driving from New York to Minneapolis and all that. The elderly and well-dressed gentleman said I'd come to "the finest restaurant in Toledo." Sir, I cannot argue with you.