Food Notes: 9/16
Chicago Hot Dogs, Kaplan's Plot, stinky cheese, cheap soy, expensive beef and more
I ate a mini Chicago hot dog.
Jason Diamond launched his debut novel, Kaplan’s Plot, at Books Are Magic in Brooklyn last night. (He’s also the author of The Sprawl, which I reviewed five years ago.) Like any good novel, Kaplan’s Plot features a lot of food talk, and since its set in his home city of Chicago, the only logical thing to do at a book launch was to serve the crowd Chicago-style hot dogs.
I had my first Chicago-style hot dog back in 2023, and I wrote about that experience at this newsletter’s sister-blog, All The Things I Eat.
For those of you more familiar with New York-style hot dogs, you might be confused by what’s happening here. New York dogs are typically topped with onions, either raw or cooked in a tomato-y sauce, and / or sauerkraut, and a dash of mustard and / or ketchup. Meanwhile, in Chicago, there’s simply a lot more stuff, and only children eat ketchup.
Key Elements of a Chicago-Style Hot Dog
Poppy seed bun
Neon-green relish
Mustard
Tomato
Pickle
Onions
Pickled Sport Pepper
The Chicago dog is sometimes known as having been “dragged through the garden,” because of all the vegetables. These toppings developed during the Great Depression as hot dog cart vendors tried to differentiate themselves, and create good value. By adding toppings from the nearby farm stands, they used cheap ingredients to upsell patrons on heartier meals.
It’s popular to credit Fluky’s, a pushcart founded by Abe Drexler, with “inventing” the Chicago dog. However, the reality is, many of the carts around the city were selling similar combinations, and they each were trying to upstage the other.
Street vendors were a big business in the city, especially among immigrants, and the hot dog reflected those ethnicities. It’s been said that each of the ingredients can be credited to ethnic groups in the city, from Eastern European Jews, Mexicans, Italians, and Greeks. More likely, each of these ingredients were a cheap way to dress up a hot dog.
Unfortunately, street vending was too popular, so the city of Chicago banned pushcarts and food trucks from selling anything except uncut produce and frozen desserts, aka ice cream. Chicago style dogs had to move indoors to food restaurants. In more recent years, as food trucks became popular again, the city often ignored the law until was eventually repealed.
Anyway, I arrived early—on time?—for the book event. I grabbed a seat, before chatting with some writers. Then the hot dogs were unveiled and I was able to grab a stunning picture of all of them arranged on the platter. Nobody wanted to disturb the perfect arrangement by being the first to take a dog, but also everyone was hungry. Finally, a elderly gentleman broke the seal, unleashing the hounds.
Just in case I don’t get around to writing about the actual event, here’s Jason Diamond talking with Xochitl Gonzalez, author of Olga Dies Dreaming.
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