There must be something in the air.  Or maybe the water.  Whatever it is, we here at The Faster Times food section seem to have gone a little hot dog crazy lately.  Take, for instance, Street Foods correspondent Sarah Karnasiewicz’s recent post about the Yankee Hot Dog Trail, in which she muses, “Looking back on the summer, I realize I’ve already devoted an unequal percentage of this real estate to the subject of hot dogs. And here I go again! Whats behind my obsession? Maybe I still have the tastes of a 10 year old.”

I’m pretty sure I know what’s behind your obsession, Sarah, and I don’t think it has anything to do with an immature palate (you enjoyed calf’s spleen with me, remember?).  There are larger factors at work here, without question.  First, I don’t know if everyone’s noticed, but it’s summertime.  And a summer without hot dogs is like…well, not much like summer at all.  As American folk, we’ve had that summertime=hot-dog-time equation deeply imprinted into our collective subconscious since we were children, what with dogs at the beach, dogs in the park, on the boardwalk, at picnics, cookouts, birthday parties, and, my favorite, at the ballpark.  By the time the sun hangs hot and high, that Pavlovian conditioning kicks in, and it’s not long before we’re dreaming of hot dogs and drooling like that famous canine after hearing the dinner bell ring.  Resistance is useless.   There’s also the nostalgia-factor to consider, which is likely why Sarah hinted at her love for hot dogs at ten years old.  Kids love hot dogs, so hot dogs make kids happy.  Parents recognize this correlation, so they feed kids hot dogs.  Repeat.  So when we eat a dog as an adult, we’re accessing that history of ourselves being happy children, and the fondness of that reminiscence — as well as the tastiness of the dog — is a wonderful thing.

But this doesn’t mean that the humble hot dog, as a food, is intrinsically childish.  In fact, hot dogs are finally having their moment.  Much like the recent national obsession with upscale hamburgers (it seems like every chef has his or her own take on one by now) helped legitimize the burger as something more refined than simple junk food, people are beginning to have the same attitude toward the hot dog, a staple of American life for more than a century.  According to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America:

From the end of the nineteenth century and well into the second half of the next, the hot dog was America’s chief iconic food item.  Originally an ethnic food, itt may have been America’s first industrially produced, portion-controlled, and mass-marketed meat product.  Widely sold in public venues…to consumers from every social and economic strata, its mythic attributes might be best summed up in the phrase, “America’s great democratic food.”

Now, thank goodness, the hot dog is enjoying its day in the sun.  Once maligned by eco/health-conscious foodies and locavores for being unhealthy, industrially produced and ecologically irresponsible, the picnic tables are being turned by clever, talented chefs and amateurs who realize just how wonderful a simple hot dog can be, especially if it’s made by hand, using quality, local ingredients.  This was the idea behind Bark, a new hot dog shop in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood.  “It’s what we needed here,” says Joshua Sharkey, Bark’s chef and co-proprietor.  “I’ve worked in fine-dining for years, but opening a fine-dining restaurant just wasn’t economically responsible.  I wanted to change people’s perspective of fast food, to make it transparent, to make sure our patrons know exactly where their food comes from.  It could have been anything — hamburgers, chicken wings — so long as we did it well, with the same attention to detail and sourcing as we’d learned in all those fine-dining kitchens.  But I’ve always loved hot dogs.”

That attention to detail results in, to be fairly honest, one of the best hot dogs I’ve had in more than a decade.  From the red-pepper relish to baked beans using heirloom Marfax beans from Maine, a buttered and grilled split-top New England roll, and sourkraut cured in oak Chardonnay barrels for up to four months, Bark releases the dog’s natural culinary potential, elevating it so far above the dirty water dogs from street vendors that, even despite their shortcomings, we continue to love.  This is the hot dog taken up a step, and then some.  All the produce comes from farmers who the proprietors know personally.  And as for the sausage itself, that’s the one thing the chefs at Bark don’t make in-house.  “They’re made by an Austrian guy upstate,” says Sharkey, and if anyone knows anything about sausages, it’s the Austrians (note: our word for a hot dog “wiener” is descended from “Weinwurst,” the pale, skinny veal sausages famous in Vienna).  “We use Berkshire pork, the jowls and the shoulder, as well as a beef shoulder, stuff them in a natural sheep casing for real “snap,” then smoke them with hickory and apple wood.”  Everything has been thoughtfully planned and executed, right down to the recycled, composted cups and paperware.

[Now we know exactly who let the dogs out...and we can finally thank them for it.]

It’s not just former fine-dining chefs getting excited about hot dogs; even amateur cooks are taking a piece of the action.  Take Kara Masi, creator of the Ted & Amy Supper Club, whose exploration of the hot dog arts began four years ago.  “I had a lot of friends who liked hot dogs, and we started a hot dog tour of New York.  There were seven or eight of us, and we hit about ten hot dog places.  But there were just so many spots, we couldn’t get to them all.  So we had to do another tour, with another ten places, and eventually it culminated in the first hot dog cook-off in my apartment.”  Several years and several hundred dogs later, the Great Hot Dog Cookoff has well outgrown Masi’s Brooklyn apartment.  This past year, the event, now hosted at the local Kelso Brewery, had roughly 500 attendees, and raised $4,000 for City Harvest, a New York-based food rescue and donation nonprofit.  Entrants over the years have contributed everything from deep fried dogs to ones with Oaxacan mole chili, Thanksgiving dogs that combine stuffing, mac and cheese and gravy baked in a pastry, hot dog sushi, a buffalo wing dog with bleu cheese served on a celery stalk, even a three-bean, tequila-spiked alligator chili cheese Wagyu beef dog.  (Full disclosure, that was my entry into the 2008 competition.  And yes, it did wind up on ThisIsWhyYou’reFat.com, thank you very much.)

[The author's entry into the 2008 Great Hot Dog Cookoff.  Yes, that's homemade alligator chili.  And melted cheese, sour cream and chives.  And crushed Fritos.  Duh.]

“I have to admit, your dog was pretty over the top,” says Masi.  Well, of course it was.  Sometimes, that’s just what a hot dog should be.

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