Best Hot Dog

So where do you find the quintessential hot dog in New York City I hear you say? Trying my first "weiner" (don't you just love that word?) was right up there on my list of essential New York experiences. On my first day I was so excited I grabbed a hot dog from the first street vendor that I saw outside my apartment on Canal St, Chinatown. Sauerkraut, onions, mustard and ketchup please! Probably no surprise that for US$1.75 it was a pretty ordinary experience. But the quest for the best hot dog in New York had begun. So where to next?  Katz's Deli has been around for literally a hundred years and is a total New York institution.  While best known for their pastrami on rye they also do a mean hot dog (made the old fashioned way, on-site and kosher, of course). This hot dog did not let me down and was very tasty and satisfying,  a classic dog in a classic setting. The only problem was - too expensive. Next up was Gray's Papaya.

I had been dreaming of Gray's Papaya ever since I saw an Anthony Bourdain episode where he has the "Recession Special" - 2 dogs and a papaya drink for $4.75 - bargain or what?? This 24/7 chain has 4 locations on the west side of Manhattan and is famous for their inexpensive and high quality sausages.  The huge neon sign and lurid fluro lighting makes this place a magnet for late night drunken revellers (and erm homeless people) and sure enough, after a night out in the East Village, Gray's Papaya beckoned.  But uh oh, we were fooled by their biggest competitor - Papaya King (the sign just said 'Papaya' and looked exactly the same, a block away from where the real one was!). So after a false start, we finally managed to get to Gray's and had a great hot dog, and while it was quite a thin, long sausage, it was flavoursome and the papaya drink was strangely good to wash it down with.  Next up was Nathan's Hot Dog Stand in Coney Island which is famous, especially for their July 4 Annual Hot Dog Eating Contest (current record is sixty-eight hot dogs & buns (H.D.B.) in ten minutes).   This was the ORIGINAL New York hot dog, started out by a Polish immigrant in 1916 whose wife came up with a killer recipe for a hot dog which was to become world famous for its quality and taste.  These babies were all beef and had good flavour - definite thumbs up. Finally, Crif Dog in the East Village is NYC's No 1 Weiner (so their advertising says).   They are definitely marketing to a more discerning, up market, trendy but still young crowd with its groovy location in St Marks Place complete with a telephone booth outside which is actually the secret entrance to nightclub PDT (Please don't tell).  Here, they deep fry the sausages in great big bubbling vats of oil and they offer a whole range of different toppings, very different to the more traditional places I had been to. There are basically two types of sausages to choose from: The New Yorker is plain all-beef dog and The Crif Dog was their handmade, naturally smoked beef and pork dog, all served with the usual toppings, mustard, ketchup and onions. Or you could get a bit creative by trying something like The Chiuhuahua is a bacon wrapped dog with avocado and sour cream or the Spicy Red Neck was bacon wrapped with chilli, coleslaw and jalepenos.  One bite into the Spicy Red Neck (pictured below) I knew that this was the best hot dog I had ever tried - it had a kind of snap to it and tasted sensational - mission accomplished!

Canal St Hot Dog Street Vendor 5/10
Katz's Deli, Lower East Side - 9/10
Papapa King, Lower East Side 6/10
Gray's Papaya, Lower East Side 8/10
Nathan's Original Hot Dog Stand, Coney Island 9/10
Crif Dogs, St Marks Place - 10/10