I am an American and I Eat Hot Dogs

1 x Poor Dan Junior, $3.29

This is one of those restaurants that is all about the atmosphere. It’s a total throw-back to those times when food used to be delivered to restaurant-goers by railroad. What? You don’t remember those times? Well this is the kind of place that makes you think that such a thing might have been popular at some point maybe about 50 years ago.

Orders are called in to the kitchen via a closed circuit phone system with phones at each table in the restaurant. Minutes later, a train comes along trailing your order of food in a folded up take-out box. The train deposits the food off onto a hydraulic lift that gently lowers it to table level for distribution to the lucky recipients. Drinks and desserts, unfortunately, arrive in the more mundane traditional manner.

I wasn’t really in much of a hot dog mood, but they had a rather interesting menu item that a hot dog blogger just couldn’t pass up: a hot dog, sliced up and served on a hamburger bun along with cheese, chili, mustard and pickles. It just got me all nostalgic for those days when there wouldn’t be hot dog buns in the house, but mom would cook up hot dogs anyway and call upon her stash of frozen hamburger buns. Then she’d just defrost one, slice up the dog into circles, add some mustard and we’d be good to go!

I know I’m maybe a little fussy and I have rather high standards for hot dogs, but you can believe me when I tell you that this hot dog took “salty” to extremes. I started to feel myself becoming dehydrated while eating it. I couldn’t even finish. I think it was a combination of overly salty chili and an overly salty hot dog, but who knows? Maybe they were salting the mustard and the pickles too? My recommendation is to skip the dog at Fritz’s and instead go for a “Gen Dare,” which is a hamburger topped with hash browns, cheese, and grilled onions!