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What is the best hot dog going?

I ain't no hot dog snob, I like all kinds.

What is the best hot dog going?

Once upon a time, there was a hot dog shop called "Coney Island."  I have to believe that it was in New York City, but I don't know that to be the case.  I was started by a Greek immigrant.  They made small, short (ca. 5") hot dogs called "coneys."  The topping was yellow mustard, a mild chili, and onions.  The only extra was cheese.  They were cheap.  5 cents or so at the start, back around 1900.  He spelled "wieners" as "weiners" to avoid any trademark infringement.  Or maybe just because his English spelling was not so good.  The original guy licensed other Greek immigrants to start similar restaurants with the same name in other cities.

One of the licensees was a guy named Christos Economou, and he started a "Coney Island" in Tulsa in 1926.  It was successful.  It was an institution in downtown Tulsa by the 1940s.  When I first ate there around 1963, it was in a deep but narrow storefront.  It was old and dark and dingey.  The coneys were prepared behind a line of counters down the left side of the space and the customers ate in old-fashioned all-wood school desks down the right side.

By around 1970, there was still the original Coney Island, but there began popping up a sort of local franchise operation called "Coney I-lander."  All owned by the same Enonomou family as far as I know.  When Christos died, the business was split and one of his heirs got the original downtown store, and another (or others) got the Coney I-landers scattered around the Tulsa metro area.

So now, under the original "Coney Island" name, some are opening in the D-FW area.

I haven't eaten at any of the Texas locations, but the ones in Tulsa--"Island" and "I-landers"--are great places to go and get 3-4 coneys, or you can get tamales, or you can get Frito chile pie.

Nothing fancy.  No Polish dogs or Chicago dogs.  Just bun, wiener, mustard, chili, onions, and cheese.  I don't care for raw onions, so I get mine without them.


10-15 years ago, a guy in Norman wanted to start a Coney I-lander there.  But the Economou heirs supposedly didn't want to expand beyond their existing footprint, so they said no.  The guy in Norman reverse-engineered the product (the chili was the only hard part) and got it about 95% right in his place called "Top Dawg Coneys."  (Top Dawg was the mascot for the Sooners' basketball teams back then.)  This is why finding out about Coney Islands in D-FW was a big surprise to me.  Maybe the money was right this time around.

You can get hot dogs at a lot of restaurants, but I can't think of a single hot dog specific restaurant in Austin.  Not like places like Chicago where I saw restaurants specifically devoted to the "Red Hot."  

There are hot dog vending carts downtown and on 6th street at night, maybe that's the closest?  Houston has a chain of restaurants called "James Coney Island" that I've always assumed was a hot dog place, though I've never been to one.

I do indeed remember Maddog and Beans.  But I don't recall a hot dog there, for me it was usually a burger.

And good point, I do think we have a der Weinerschnitzel in Austin once again (we had one when I was a kid and there was a kids-eating-area that was designed to look like a biplane, it was awesome!).  That place closed in the 80s but a new one has opened up at Burnet/Braker sometime in the 2000s.

So I picked up my first winter seasonal, a 6-pack of Live Oak Primus which is a delicious (and strong) weizenbock.

At least 12 oz of it will be going into the chili I'm making today, as well. 

What's up with this seltzer craze?  Well, I know, they ran out of other ideas.