Nick’s Hot Dog, 6961 Blvd. St. Laurent, Montreal, Canada

1 x Michigan dog (sweet chili-like meat sauce, toasted bun) CA$1.35, 1 x Grilled Dog (toasted bun, mustard) CA$1.10

So before we left for Montreal, I got up on the Internet and was checking out the Cannuck dog scene. I found one reference to Nick’s Hot Dogs that claimed, “Nick’s is so good, that I’ll never eat hot dogs from anywhere else.” This got me pretty excited. So we started walking down St. Laurent. One thing we learned as we walked was that each block is worth about 100 street numbers. So if we had started at 6700, we would have had to walk two blocks. However, we started around 1500, so we had to walk 55 blocks. It took a long time. Along the way, we stopped at the Casa del Popolo and had an excellent cream ale. We also stopped in a really cool restaurant supply store that had the biggest pot you’ve ever seen. You could fit a few children in there. There were also industrial toasters (>$500), deli slicers, a ladle that held > 1L of liquid, oars for stirring your gigantic cauldron, a $90 colander that was 2 feet wide, and a nacho cheese dispenser. Eventually we made it to Nick’s. Everyone in the restaurant thought we were a little strange because we were so excited to eat hot dogs. The best thing about these hot dogs was the price. We were happy that the buns were toasted, and the meat sauce was acceptable. Overall, it really seemed like these Canadian dogs were just sad imitations of our American dogs. But since they were so cheap, no one seemed to mind much.