Eating a Chicago style hot dog without spilling is just one of our culinary birthrights. Others include eating an Italian beef juicy and sweet without drenching your shirt or drinking Malort without immediately vomiting.
I’d sub classify Jimmys and Gene&Judes as Depression dogs. My personal favorite style minus the onion of course; I’m no savage.
Were you at Fluky’s? I loved that place!
I’ve never understood how you can taste the actual hot dog itself with all that other crap on there. Seems to me that the combination might be good, but that the dog itself might get lost in the midst of a bunch of relatively strong flavors.
Tain’t gonna happen, McGee. People still can’t agree on who invented the Michigan hot dog and Plattsburgh is a hundredth the size of Chicago.
I’ve never understood why people want to cram so many toppings on a hot dog with an undersized bun. Personally, I’m pretty conservative with what I like on a dog–chili, onions, ketchup, and I’m good to go. But even with that, a normal sized but just doesn’t cut it. And with more toppings, it would seem to be even more cumbersome. If I were making my own, I’d probably get small sub rolls, and take out some of the breading.
Easily, assuming it’s a hot dog with any flavor or quality. The fact that the meat is hot against the cold condiments probably helps as well since your tongue picks up on the different temperature and perhaps that helps attune it to the flavor.
I’m not in the city proper but we have a butcher shop near here that makes their own hot dogs and, over the summer, has a cart out front selling them with a table of condiments. At least once a week I do the relish/pickle/tomato/mustard/celery salt/poppy seed bun thing and never had any trouble tasting the dog. I suppose if your dog was bland to start with, I could see how the flavor would get lost.
That does seem to be the culinary subclassification by the foodie crowd here. I’ve only heard it referred to as such in the last 5-10 years, and on the internet. I’m not entirely sure why as the original 5-cent “Depression Sandwiches” a la Fluky’s were topped with mustard, pickle relish, onion, dill pickle, hot peppers, lettuce and tomatoes. When I think of “Depression Dog,” I think of the old story of how the Chicago hot dog came to be: cheap food, combining meat and salad into one course, that can be consumed by hand. It was supposed to be a somewhat balanced “meal-in-one” kind of thing.
But, like I said, that’s the style I grew up with. Most of the local places I frequented, like Nicky’s and Chickie’s (more famous for their beef, but have a good dog), did hot dogs in what you call “depression style”: plain bun, onions, relish, mustard, optional sport peppers, and sometimes a pickle spear. Fries always included and often wrapped in the paper with the dog. JR’s did a version of the Chicago style dog that also included cucumber slices on it. I don’t think I even had a proper “Chicago style hot dog” until I was well into high school; this even though I grew up in the city (though on the Southwest Side, where culinary traditions can vary a bit.) And I’m still not entirely sure where to go within 5 miles or so of my house to get a Vienna Beef poster-style Chicago hot dog. Portillo’s is the closest I could think of, but they don’t do the neon green. Besides that, it’s getting harder and harder to find natural casing dogs around here (if you consider that essential to a “Chicago style hot dog.” I do.) Everybody seems to have gone skinless, and it drives me batty. I pretty much only eat hot dogs from Portillos in my general neighborhood because of this.
According to the article I linked above, Fluky’s is apparently the best guess for where the neon green relish stuff started, and if you need neon green relish for it to be an official Chicago style hot dog (I personally don’t think you do), that’s the most likely guess. I seem to remember reading (so no cites at hand, and take this with a grain of salt) that Vienna Beef picked up on this and then marketed the hell out of what the proper ingredients were for a Chicago dog to move more of their products (as they produce the neon green relish, as well as sport peppers.
An aside of the subject of green.
I’ve never really visited Chicago so I haven’t had what could be called an authentic Chicago style hot dog. So help me out.
I’ve seen several people refer to the color of the relish as “neon green”.
This is the color I see being associated with Chicago style hot dogs. It’s obviously got some dye in it but it’s noticeably darker than neon green.
And there is a condiment sold as hot dog relish which has mustard in it and which comes closer to an actual neon green color.
So what relish would I expect to find on a Chicago style hot dog? The dark green relish called Chicago style relish or the light green relish called hot dog relish?
I’ve always seen that particular synthetic-looking green color on the Chicago-style hot dogs. It also looks a lot like the same dye used for the green maraschino cherries that you sometimes see.
I think “neon green” was more of a way to describe the unnaturally vivid greenness of the relish, rather than a strictly accurate descriptor.
Yeah, the “neon” refers to the unnaturally saturated look of the green. It’s a color that doesn’t look like it exists in nature. “Neon” is the word that most naturally fits to me. I suppose you can call it something like “candy apple green” if you want, but “neon” gets the artificialness of the color across more quickly. Regular sweet relish is more of a desaturated green, kind of a cooked pea green, verging on yellow.
That is not at all what I would call “neon green.” That’s a clear mustard yellow to me. You don’t really find that relish much around here, but there are some joints, at least in the old days, that used something that looked like this and called it “pickalilli.” The “neon green” relish is like the top three relishes on this site. Vienna Beef relish (the third one) is probably the most well-known. I consider that “neon” as compared with the relishes beneath. I suppose more accurately, it’s just a pure green relish, as opposed to the more greenish-yellow ones that are undyed.
This thread convinced me to havea Chicago dog at the hot dog stand near my office in Bethesda, MD. It comes pretty close, including the neon green relish, but they don’t steam the bun.
Ketchup is always verboten on hot dogs, no matter what else is involved. I prefer mustard(dark or yellow) and sauerkraut, preferably Frank’s single, which is perfect for one hot dog.
I wish I could remember the name of the place, but it’s just been too long.
I missed this somehow. I’ve never seen a jalapeno pepper served on a hot dog in Chicago. It’s always sport peppers, which are much smaller. They are maybe two inches in length and a half inch (at most) in width. That said, some places, like the Maxwell Street hot dog places like Jim’s Original and Express Grill, serve what are either oversized sport peppers or something like pickled serranos, in terms of size. I’ve never seen a jalapeno served with a hot dog here. Ketchup is almost always not included on an “everything on it” dog, but there is at least one place in Chicago, somewhere around Randolph & Wells – I can’t remember the name of the place – where I got ketchup on an “everything on it” dog. I don’t know if it was a fluke with a new guy behind the counter or what, but I haven’t been back to check. If you go to some of the Mexican places that do a take on Sonoran style dogs, though, anything goes. I’m just talking about the usual old-style Chicago joints. You will also find some big box store cafeterias put ketchup on an everything-on-it dog, but, well, that’s what you get, I suppose, for getting a hot dog from a Wal-Mart. It still feel very odd to me to say “everything, no ketchup” when ordering my dog from a new place, as that’s not ever something I had to say before.
I miss Frank’s Franks … It was on Halsted St. N. of Fullerton. They had the world’s best chili dogs & french fries, all wrapped up in (tissue-type) paper. Greazy and satifyin’ …
And the Original Chicago Dog, too. Been a long time. WHERE is my celery salt?
But now we need to discuss (Chicago-style) Italian Beefs & Sausage, & Combo’s, dipped wet. Soggy ! 
Where is this Jimmy’s of which you speak? There’s a Jimmy’s by my late high school that serves the basic Chicago style you mentioned, but that’s in Arlington Heights and I don’t associate the Arlington Heights of 45 years ago with iconic Chicago cuisine.
I’ve seen World Market while driving, but never been in there. It’s located in an exceedingly large strip mall which is now completely uninhabited except for a Five Guys, a Jimmy John’s, and a post office. I may have to inspect it if only to determine whether or not they purvey these peppers of which you speak.