It was Gregor’s idea to bring together great Franconian beer, Heavy Metal music and American hot dogs into a single concept – but it took a pair of Americans to make a better hot dog.
When we were first opening the bar, there was a discussion about if it would be better to find a great hot dog and use them, or if we should make our own. So we set off to try every hot dog that we could get their hands on. What they quickly found is that though the hot dog may have its roots in the thin sausages of Frankfurt and Vienna – they really tasted nothing like the what is served at the great shops across America.
Though Avery and Janet had spent over a decade making products in the food and beverage space, and Avery spends most of his life now in the kitchen, he had never spent time making sausages. However, one of their good friends out of Baltimore, John Reusing, did know a thing or two about sausage making as he was not only once owner of a legendary bar, but at one time he was also owner of a hundred year old butcher shop.
What he learned is that hot dogs may be called “Franks” or “Wieners” in the USA, but that hot dogs are truly an American invention, not coming from German butchers, but coming mostly from first-and-second generation Polish butchers in New England. They used their fresh garlic and paprika kielbasa as the base, and turned that recipe into a cooked wurst that only needed to be warmed up – allowing it to be stored for longer and therefore be more affordable for their communities.
As a gift, John entrusted Avery and Janet with the shop’s original recipes to use as the base for making their own hot dogs in Europe.
“We make great hot dogs because we eat more of them than you do!”
With these historical recipes in hand, Avery and Janet bought a meat grinder, a sausage stuffer, and set off on turning his classic Polish garlic sausage into a hot dog. They removed a little bit of garlic, changed smoked paprika for sweet, changed the grind to something finer, and within a couple of tries, they had a damned good hot dog.
But Gregor knew we couldn’t just have one type of hot dog, especially if he’d be eating them every day behind the bar. So, having lived in New Orleans for years, Avery and Janet started to work on a hot dog with more herbs and spices based on a classic Andouille sausage. That hot dog was good, but it was lacking that last little bit of something to make it perfect.
What made it perfect was finding the right butcher. Because we needed to ensure that every hot dog was made perfectly batch after batch, they went out in search of the right butcher. They found that metzger in Austria, and even better, it was a 100% bio metzger. We sent the recipe for our classic hot dog and what we were working on for the Andouille – and they realized that what the Andouille needed was time in their smokehouse. This double smoked Andouille became the Louisiana Dog.
During the Pandemic, though the bar’s kitchen was closed, they kept working on recipes. For those who didn’t eat pork, the Merguizo was created – a combination of beef Chorizo from Mexico and a lamb Merguez from Morocco that becomes our version of a hot link. Avery and Janet also tweaked two classic hot dog toppings from their childhood in Connecticut – a hot pepper relish and a meat sauce that’s so much better than chili… and then took inspiration from Peru to make a spicy condiment that is the perfect topping for everyone who loves a little blast of spice.
Now we’re letting you make the perfect HopDog at home! Just turn up the heavy metal (or classic rock), grab a cold Franconian lager and have one of the best hot dogs of your life!