Propaganda by Proletariateats

They call it dragging it through the garden, this process by which Chicagoans turn the everyday hotdog into a thing of gastronomic wonder.  The alchemy through which Windy City culinarians accomplish this is uncomplicated, but exact: they take a hotdog—boiled or grilled—and put it on a bun.  Then they top that bun with celery salt, pickled sport peppers, white onion, iridescent-green sweet relish, sliced tomato, pickle spear, and yellow mustard.  A maximalist hotdog, to be sure, but one conceived in 1930s Chicago and sold along the city’s Maxwell Street to a depression-era proletariat ravenous for the illusion that a lone nickel could buy the facsimile of a full meal.

From this praxis of culinary thrift, this dragging of tubed meats through metaphorical gardens, comes what we know today as the Chicago dog, the best hotdog in all America.  It’s an unimprovable coalescence of flavors, this oleaginous-salty-sour thing, delivered at working-class prices in hand-held form, whose ubiquity, across this city, and presence all over the world, makes it Chicago’s greatest gift to all gastronomy.

How good is the Chicago dog?  Better than the dirty-water dogs of New York.  Better than the street dogs of L.A.  Better, even, than the half-smokes of D.C.

So, where can you find one of these magical Chicago dogs, these eighth world wonders and unicorns of culinary delight?  That’s easy.  They’re literally everywhere in Chicago.  The next time you’re here, locate the hotdog stand nearest your hotel (because there will most certainly be a hotdog stand close to your hotel), and buy your hotdog there.  If you’re on Chicago’s north side, you might find yourself at Superdawg.  If on the south side of town, you’d do well to swing by Fred & Jack’s.  But if you’re on the city’s west side, you’ll want to visit Pete’s Red Hots, located near my neighborhood, and just up the street from Al Capone’s old house.  

Pete’s is the hotdog stand I most frequent for it being the quintessence of all-things-Chicago, a true no-bullshit zone, where pretense and food snobbery won’t fly.  It’s way too working-class for that.  It’s also a place that treats its patrons like family, giving them nicknames, laughing with them in jocularity and in secret patois.

Pete’s purveys a robust array of Chicago classics—Italian beef, rib tips, Greek chicken—but it’s for their hotdogs that locals flock:  all-beef Vienna dogs on Rosen’s poppy-seed buns, topped with all-things-pickled.  The Chicago dogs at Pete’s are then bundled with fries inside white, butcher’s paper that steams the bun against the dog’s casing to form a perfectly integrated, umami delivery system that disgorges pleasure into the eater’s frontal lobe with each successive bite.

The hotdogs at Pete’s are the apotheosis of the perfect Chicago dog, the Platonic ideal of what a Chicago dog should be. But as perfect as Pete’s dogs are, and boundless as my love for Pete’s is, I believe Pete’s makes the second-best hotdog in Chicago.  Top honor goes to the inestimable Gene & Jude’s, who since 1946, has reigned as the Windy City’s undisputed high temple of hot dog cookery.

Located just south of O’Hare International in the liminal space between an industrial wasteland and heavily wooded forest preserve—the kind of area one might dump a body were one so inclined—Gene & Jude’s operates under strictures that only an institution assured of its own greatness would:  No Seats.  No Ketchup.  No Pretense.  No Nonsense.

This creed isn’t a gimmick or schtick.  It’s dogma, tattooed, I’m sure, across the hearts and souls of everyone working there. 

Look at their menu and see what I mean.   Gene & Jude’s sells three things.  They sell hot dogs.  They sell French fries (house made in plain view of guests).  And they sell corn tamales.  Besides soft drinks, that’s all they sell.

Toppings are equally scant.  Gene & Jude’s will gladly put mustard on your hot dog.  They’ll give you relish and onions.  They’ll even provide you a smattering of sport peppers, should you ask.  But desire any more than that for your dog, and you’re out of luck.  And God help you if you order ketchup.  Because no Chicagoan worth his salt will contravene in the shitstorm that inevitably follows when some out-of-towner swans into Gene & Jude’s and demands Heinz for his fucking dog.  Ridicule might be his sanction for ketchup.  Maybe it’s fists.  Whatever his fate, it will be considered just dessertsby an ad hoc jury of Gene & Jude’s peers, who will step over his body to not hold up the line.

Don’t let these strictures deter you.  And don’t let fear of a fat lip keep you away.  Gene & Jude’s cares about you and how well you eat.  To help that happen, they’ve implemented a kind of hotdog orthodoxy to save you from yourself, and from the bad choices visiting hotdog neophytes like you make.  Gene & Jude’s knows what’s best for your dog, and their menu guides you toward making the most informed hotdog-related decisions.  It shepherds you through the ordering process by leading you through the narrowest of customer egresses, one wholly uncluttered of choice.  Resulting from their careful curation are hotdogs considered to be perfect specimens of meat-in-tube-form, peerless in simplicity and savor across the entire city.  Six ingredients amalgamated into one of modern gastronomy’s single, best bites.

So central is the hotdog to Chicago’s culinary identity, in fact, that “real” Chicago restaurant chefs have gotten into the act, as well.  They’ve done this as high-minded chefs are wont to do:  they’ve fucked with the form.  Case in point: the hotdog soup at Cobra Lounge.  

Cobra Lounge isn’t a restaurant, exactly.  Nor is it a brewpub, despite the presence of a brewery (All Rise Brewery, in this case) operating within the space.  It’s a rock club par excellence that offers patrons a truly delicious place to eat before stage diving in front of their favorite band.  

Located in Chicago’s West Loop, the Cobra Lounge hosts some of underground music’s most vital and celebrated acts.  It’s the kind of place you might have your nose broken in a mosh pit, and then repair to the bar to happily bleed into your house-brewed pint.

Hotdog soup seems in keeping, then, with Cobra Lounge’s fuck-the-man/fight-the-power ethos.  That their chef, Jason Gilmore, should subvert Chicago’s most beloved food form by turning it into soup makes perfect sense.  And not just any soup, mind you, but the kind of soup that will have you pounding your table and wondering aloud why you haven’t been eating this soup every day of your life.  That’s how good Chef Gilmore’s soup really is.

Slices of Vienna beef hot dog.  Tomatoes.  Pickles.  Giardiniera.  And potatoes to mimic the savor of French fries. Everything you’d ever want atop a Chicago dog, but lovingly assembled, instead, inside a viscous, mustardy broth, and topped with a dusting of poppy seeds. 

If punk rock were a dish, Jason Gilmore’s hotdog soup would be it.  His soup hoists a mighty middle-finger at the culinary establishment by offering a masterclass in killing the very thing you love.  A perfectly rock ‘n roll move.  Gilmore has succeeded in creating something special and unique through his act of subversion.  This savant of soup, this Chef Jason Gilmore, is to culinary ingenuity what The Clash are to punk rock.  

I eat his soup every chance I get.

So forget three-star Alinea.  Bollocks to Chicago’s three-star Smyth.  The next time you’re in the Windy City, eat a hotdog, for Pete’s sake, and one that’s been dragged through the garden.  Eat it with tomatoes and celery salt.  Eat it with sport peppers and onions.  Eat it with mustard and a pickle spear.  Eat it and be amazed.  

Just don’t ask for ketchup.

Contact: christopher@proletariateats.com