“There are no two finer words in the Eng­lish lan­guage than ‘encased meats’, my friend.” — Secret Robbie

This Sat­ur­day, John and I hit up Hot Doug’s, a local Chicago insti­tu­tion spe­cial­iz­ing in the con­struc­tion and deploy­ment of dressed encased meats. In other words, a hot dog joint. We went with three friends of ours, and it was super-​fun times. Alas, I didn’t bring my camera with me—so instead I will paint a pic­ture for you in words.

As usual, let’s get the pre­lim­i­nar­ies out of the way: what is a Chicago-​style hot dog? Although not as world-​renowned as our deep dish pizza, the Chicago hot dog is a sig­na­ture trade­mark of the city’s gus­ta­tory cul­ture. It’s com­prised of:

• a steamed all-​beef hot dog (usu­ally Vienna Beef)
• a steamed poppy seed bun
• yellow mustard
• no ketchup
• neon-​green relish (we’re talk­ing flu­o­res­cent here, folks)
• diced onions
• really, NO KETCHUP
• tomato wedges (two)
• a pickle spear
• sport peppers
• seri­ously, if you put ketchup on it, the hot dog police will come and take you away (you’ll never even hear them coming—their black heli­copters are silent)
• and a dash of celery salt!

Slight devi­a­tions from the recipe are occa­sion­ally tol­er­ated, with the one absolute excep­tion that you may never, ever, ever put ketchup on the dog.¹

(An aside: One issue I’ve always had trou­ble teas­ing apart is whether afi­ciona­dos claim that the Chicago-​style is merely a recipe, or the One True Recipe. The rhetoric makes implicit ref­er­ence to the exis­tence of other meth­ods of hot dog prepa­ra­tion (ergo, the term Chicago-​style), but the under­ly­ing insin­u­a­tion is always that Chicago-​style is inher­ently supe­rior—a kind of Überfrank, if you will. In any case, it’s remark­able to see how even a lib­eral rel­a­tivist hippie will mirac­u­lously trans­mo­grify into a hard-​line fascista when it comes to the topic of how encased meats should be pre­pared. I’ve seen descrip­tions where not only the ingre­di­ents have been cod­i­fied into a pris­tine, unim­peach­able list of Com­mand­ments, but also the sequence in which those ingre­di­ents are to be applied, as well as the very words to be uttered while order­ing one—the phrase­ol­ogy delin­eated pre­cisely, as though it were a wiz­ardly incan­ta­tion. Mis­pro­nounce even a single word and the spell fails; instead of a hot dog, you’ve acci­den­tally mate­ri­al­ized the goat-​headed Belial, mas­ter­less Prince of Hell and com­man­der of 80 demonic legions, before whom all manner of infer­nal deprav­ity pro­ceeds. Really, it happens!)

But if Hot Doug’s were merely another Chicago hot dog joint, I wouldn’t be writ­ing this post. I cer­tainly wouldn’t have waited in line for 90 min­utes for one of their franks. (Yep, 90 min­utes! The line lit­er­ally went out the door and around the corner.) In fact, Hot Doug’s really isn’t a hot dog place at all. As indi­cated in the title of this post, a better term would be “encased meats”. Why? Well, here, take a look at some of their spe­cials for today:

• Red Bell Pepper Wild Boar Sausage with Sun-​Dried Tomato Mus­tard and Pis­ta­chio Pecorino
• The Atomic Bomb Spicy Pork Sausage with Spicy Pas­sion Fruit May­on­naise and Smoked Gouda Cheese
• Blue Cheese Pork Sausage with White Peach Puree, Rum-​Infused Dried Fruit and Roasted Almonds
• Bacon and Ched­dar Elk Sausage with Goose Island Honker’s Ale Mus­tard and Serendip­ity Cheese
• Foie Gras and Sauternes Duck Sausage with Truf­fle Aioli, Foie Gras Mousse and Sel Gris

I could go on, but you get the idea. The menu reads like you’re in a gourmet restau­rant. (If you’re curi­ous, follow the above link for a com­plete list­ing of the spe­cials.) Indeed, these are no mere hot dogs—they are works of art. Except you can eat them, too! (Which pos­si­bly explains why the line to get into Hot Doug’s is sub­stan­tially longer than the line for, say, the Louvre.)

Now, it is a well-​known fact that every choice presents you with the promise of a mul­ti­tude of pos­si­ble uni­verses. Each selec­tion you make nec­es­sar­ily pales in com­par­i­son to the aggre­gate of those pos­si­bil­i­ties, swollen and tumes­cent as a sausage over­stuffed with pure heaven-​spiced poten­tial. It was my unen­vi­able task to whit­tle the daz­zling array of selec­tions to a scant two or three items for pur­chase. Alas, I am only a single man with but a single stom­ach. In order to max­i­mize the number of food­stuffs sam­pled, I went half­sies with a friend on both the elk sausage and foie gras spe­cials. I also got a tra­di­tional Chicago-​style dog as a ges­ture of respect to the hot dog gods.

My favorite item was easily the elk sausage, fol­lowed by the foie gras. The elk had a def­i­nite zing to it (or was it zang?) whereas the foie gras was a bit heav­ier and milder in taste. The tra­di­tional dog was good, too—but this city is teem­ing with hot dog joints, and many them have essen­tially per­fected the art of the Chicago-​style hot dog. You don’t need to drive down­town and wait 90 min­utes in line for some­thing that you can find at the Hot Dog Island down the road. In ret­ro­spect, I should have seized the oppor­tu­nity and tried another spe­cialty option instead.

In addi­tion to the ridicu­lous selec­tion of encased meats, you can get french fries that have been fried in ren­dered duck fat. Duck fat! Pay heed, though: if you’re inter­ested in trying out this indul­gently over-the-top del­i­cacy, you need to come on either Friday or Sat­ur­day. They’re also slightly more expen­sive than the reg­u­lar fries. Are they worth it? Taste-​wise, prob­a­bly not. But I think the nov­elty makes ‘em worth a try.

Final ver­dict? Def­i­nitely worth a visit, if you can make it. If you live in Chicago, I’d absolutely rec­om­mend trying it out. (Here are direc­tions.) Bring friends so you have some­one to talk to in line. And when you’re there, make sure you’re trying the gourmet spe­cial­ties. Because if all you’re look­ing for is a Chicago-​style hot dog, there are other options in town that are plenty more effi­cient and just as good.

¹ Some say it’s accept­able for kids up to a cer­tain age (I’ve heard it vary from 10 to 18) to put ketchup on their dogs. Others dis­agree on the grounds that this is merely encour­ag­ing bad behav­ior from a young age.