Meat on Bread: Hotdogs, Chicago
Through disparate human societies, cultures ancient to modern, one foundational culinary concept appears again and again. We call it ‘meat on bread’.
I was approaching the end of a work trip to the states that had taken me from New York City to the end of Long Island and back, then on to Salt Lake City for a week-long conference. Cram stuff in, my boss said. If you're going all the way over there you might as well pack it with as many appointments and visits as you can. Obediently, I crammed: I arranged a flight home via Chicago (it's on the way back from Utah right?) and delayed the second leg of the journey by a week. My partner flew out with a re-up of leisure clothes to join me for a holiday in the windy city.
I'd heard great things about Chicago from friends, who gave me a list of recommendations: Get a big ol' steak dinner, go see the bean, visit Navy pier, check out Wrigley field, eat all three kinds of Chicago pizza, try Malört, go on a river boat tour. Beyond these, we did very little research beforehand, electing to just vibe it out when there. Saturday, the first day, we went to Millennium Park to tick the bean off. A wise choice; in the neighbouring Grant Park was the first day of the annual Taste of Chicago festival - a free food festival (allegedly the largest in the world) with hundreds of thousands of attendees (over 3 million people came in ‘99), and a tonne of stalls from local food vendors selling a few of their iconic and best-selling dishes, with the option of taster portions so you could cram as much variety in as possible. Fucking get in.
It was roasting hot and the usual open container laws seem to have been relaxed for this event. Ice-cold and dripping with condensation, Goose Island slaked our thirst as we wandered around trying to choose the (to British eyes still quite substantial) few tasters we'd have room for. I spied a hotdog stall and zeroed in. I'd heard of the Chicago hotdog; not the best but the most dog, 'dragged through the garden' as they say, topped with a ridiculous combination of 7 items crammed onto a beef frank in a poppy seed bun. Mustard, white onions, dill pickle spears, tomato slices, inexplicably bright-green oniony pickle relish, celery salt, and sport peppers (for the uninitiated, think smaller versions of the pickled whole chillis the bossman tops your kebab with when you drunkenly grunt in response to 'salad sauce?'). In the Chicago dog one sees a philosophy that extends to two of the three kinds of local pizza and to much of the city’s ethos itself. Why half-ass it when you can go full tilt.
Dragged through the garden. Photo: Tom Galvin
Presented overflowing and cushioned by a comically small paper napkin, the chicago dog was precarious to remove from the concertina metal holder on the counter, especially with a wet plastic pint glass in the other hand. When I manoeuvred it into my grasp and then into my face I was slapped with a savoury vegetal saltiness. Who the hell thought a hot dog needed extra salt? By the second bite it made sense, I got a bit of everything that time; the luminous chutney (the colour of the Chicago river on Paddy’s day) is sweet and tangy, engaged in Manichean struggle with the forces of umami to bring balance from chaos. Between the dog and the beer, I was osmotically replenished; I could sweat on in this heat indefinitely. They should ship these in desert ration packs.
Europeans often smugly mock American cuisine as some twisted reflection of old world fare, bloated beyond recognition, taken to the point of grotesque parody (in much the same way as they sometimes view Americans themselves). In the Chicago dog, I sort of see their point but also encourage those of that belief down off their high horses for a moment to ponder what actually goes into a hotdog or, if you will, eine Frankfurterwurst in the first place; to see how the sausage is made. A cacophony of toppings on your smoked tube of mechanically retrieved anus seems culinarily insignificant, regardless of whether the ani are from pigs reared in Neu-Isenburg or from USDA utility cattle.
The Cubs were out of town that week, so we hit up the Guaranteed Rate Field (as it was called then) to catch the White Sox during their record breaking 2024 season losses, just after a streak of 21 consecutive lost games (a joint worst for the American league). Another Chicago dog was ordered (a big one this time) and a metal 2 pinter of beer that was painfully cold to hold. It was a weeknight and the stadium was less than a third full. We got cheap seats but were able to move close to the action because it was so empty. They lost but towards the end of the game a Sox batter knocked it out of the park - a home run. What Sox fans were there absolutely lost their minds in celebration as, to my untrained eye, several thousand dollars worth of fireworks were let off around and behind the jumbotron, lasting about 3 minutes. In the throes of a woeful season performance it was heartwarming to see such enthusiasm. It wasn't the best, but it was the most. If you're gonna celebrate you might as well go all in. If you're gonna eat a cylinder of questionable processed meat on bread, you might as well cram as much as you can on there. God Bless America. And go Sox. ⚭
Tom GalvinMore 2G4
