Chapter Two

HISTORY OF THE HOT DOG! 

Nathan's Famous

With summer upon us and picnics and backyard grills in full bloom I thought it would be fun to tell the history of the hot dog.

Most historians agree that it dates back to the Roman Empire.  Nero's cook, Gaius, may have linked the first sausages. In those days it was customary to starve pigs for a week before they were slaughtered.  

On one occasion a pig had been fully roasted when it was discovered that it had not been cleaned. Gaius stuck his knife into the belly to see if it was edible and the intestines popped out.  They were empty because of the "starvation" and puffed from the heat.  Legend has it that he stuffed the intestines with ground meats mixed with spices... the sausage was created.

The Germans picked up on the idea, creating endless varieties. In Vienna sausages became popular and both the Germans and the Austrians claim to be the originators of the modern hot dog...  Frankfurt (the frankfurter) and Vienna (the wienerwurst)

Either way, it is agreed that German immigrants  were the first to capitalize on this commodity. Using pushcarts, they sold hot dogs on the streets of New York in the early 1900s.

Nathan and his wife

Interestingly enough, it was not a German or an Austrian that popularized the hot dog in America... it was a Jewish immigrant from Poland. 

Nathan Handwerker worked at a hot dog stand on Coney Island. He slept on the kitchen floor and lived on hot dogs for a year saving his $11.00 a week salary. 

When he had $300.00 he opened his own stand and changed the price from 10 cents a hot dog to 5 cents.  Customers flocked to him and he put his competitor out of business. "Nathan's Famous" was born.

The term "hot dog" was coined in 1902 when on a cold April day at a Giants baseball game in New York, the son of concessionaire Harry Mozley Stevens convinced his father to buy up all the dachshund sausages and rolls they could find. They were sold from portable hot water tanks while the vendors yelled... 

"They're red hot! Get your dachshund sausages while their hot"  

Up in the press box "Tad" Dorgan, a newspaper cartoonist heard the vendors and drew a cartoon of a frankfurter with a tail, legs and head.  It looked like a dachshund. He wasn't sure how to spell the word so he simply called it a "hot dog" The cartoon was a sensation and the name "hot dog" stuck!

(While most concede that this story is true, no one has been able to locate his sketch.)

Hot dogs became synonymous with Chicago during the Columbian Exposition of 1893.  Today ... we consume roughly 9 billion hot dogs a year.  That's a lot of BUNS!

The Original Nathan's Famous, still open at the same location on Coney Island, has held a hot dog eating contest every year since 1916.

Joey Chestnut, winner of this years contest, inhaled 61 hot dogs!