• Hot Chicken and more: Sunny’s Hot Chicken (196 Lake Ave., Manchester, 674-4611) has opened, offering hot chicken wings and American, Greek and Indian favorites for eating in or takeout. It is open seven days, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Search for them on Facebook.
• Making new cocktails: Tuscan Market (Tuscan Village, 9 Via Toscana, Salem, 912-5467, tuscanbrands.com) will host a Seasonal Cocktails workshop Tuesday, Aug. 5, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Learn to mix two inspired seasonal cocktails with Tuscan Market’s mixologists. Tuscan Market describes this as “a fun, interactive class for cocktail lovers.” Food and beverages can be ordered during the class and will be added to a final bill. Tickets for this event are $65.87 through eventbrite.com.
• Formal tea for kids: Honey Cup Cafe & Tearoom (150 Bridge St., Manchester, 836-6008, honeycupnh.com) now provides a special Kids’ Tea Service, Tuesday through Friday, by reservation. One child or several will be served a formal treat tower with kid-friendly sweet and savory treats, and a bottomless pot of tea (or juice, milk or soda). The price per tier of the treat tower, which can be shared among children and their adults, is $28. There will also be kid-friendly stories and activities.
• Hidden gems among French wines: France produces some of the most well-known wines, but also some excellent lesser-known ones. Wine on Main (9 N Main St, Concord, 897-5828, wineonmainnh.com) will host a special summer wine class to teach you about France’s hidden gems. On Wednesday, Aug. 6, from 6:30 to 8 p.m., learn about selections from places like Cahors, Languedoc, Cotes du Roussillon, Savoie, Corsica and more. The cost is $35 per person through Wine on Main’s website and includes six wines and light snacks. Participation is limited to 20 people.
• Dinner and cigars: The Bedford Village Inn’s annual Cigar Dinner is slated for Thursday, Aug. 14, at 6 p.m. The dinner includes a cocktail hour with passed hors d’oeuvres followed by a three course meal with each course paired with a cigar and an alcoholic beverage. Tickets cost $150 per person, 21+.
The world of frozen desserts has gotten less straightforward recently.
There’s ice cream, of course, and there’s always been sherbet. But now, we find ourselves in a frozen jungle of sorbets, sorbettos, gelatos, granitas, and palettas — though not, tragically, the greatly missed Choco Tacos. **Bumps chest twice, and raises fist to the sky**.
What does it all mean? Here’s a short, mostly accurate breakdown:
Gelato – This Italian-style ice cream is made mostly from milk, with very little cream.
Sherbet – (Please note that there is no second “r.” I know! It came as a shock to me, too.) This is made usually using fruit flavors, and a very small amount of milk.
Sorbet – This refers to any churned frozen dessert product that doesn’t contain any dairy at all. It might seem super creamy from ingredients like coconut milk, but it never has any milk-milk in it.
That’s what we’re making today:
¾ cup (180 g) unsweetened almond butter
¾ cup + 2 Tablespoons (180 g) granulated sugar
2¾ cups (660 g) unsweetened almond milk
¼ cup (72 g) orgeat – an almond syrup, often used in tiki drinks
blueberry jam
In a blender, combine all the sorbet base ingredients (everything except the jam). Maybe add the almond butter last, so it doesn’t gum up the blades of your blender. Blend — slowly at first, then more vigorously — for several minutes. Put the blender jar in your refrigerator to chill for several hours or overnight. (If you don’t have an ice cream maker, pour the base into a zip-close bag, and lay it flat in your freezer to freeze solid.)
Reblend your cold sorbet base, then pour it into your ice cream maker, and churn it according to the manufacturer’s instructions. If you don’t have an ice cream maker, cut your frozen sorbet base into ice-cube-sized chunks, and break them down in your blender or food processor. You will end up with soft-serve consistency ice cream.
Spoon the ice cream into freezing containers, alternating layers with blueberry jam. You’re looking for a ratio of about 60 percent sorbet to 40 percent jam. Store in your freezer for several hours to harden up. You can buy cardboard ice cream containers online, but one-pint, plastic takeout containers work well, too; just keep in mind that they crack easily when frozen, so you might only get one use out of each one. This recipe will make about a quart of sorbet.
There are some foods that don’t work with others. But then there are others — citrus fruits for instance, or almonds — that are the Miss Congenialitys of the food world. Almonds work especially well with blueberries.
Cold and almondy, with fruity overtones is a winning combination. And, not for nothin’, it’s very pretty.
Featured photo: Almond Blueberry Swirl Sorbet. Photo by John Fladd.
New England Hot Sauce Festival brings the heat — and ocean support
Gabe DiSaverio feels very strongly about sharks and about hot sauce.
DiSaverio is the owner of Spicy Shark Hot Sauce and the main organizer of this weekend’s Hot Sauce Festival, which will be held Saturday, July 26, at Smuttynose Brewery in Hampton. He is also a huge fan of sharks.
“I’m very passionate about shark conservation,” he said. “I’m a scuba diver. Aside from being a Jaws fanatic, I’m kind of obsessed with sharks. I’m very into shark conservation. As a company, we work with and donate to a lot of nonprofits in the shark conservation world. So that’s the reason for the name of our company. I wanted to keep that same spirit alive for the hot sauce festival.” Last year’s Festival raised almost $20,000 for shark and ocean conservation.
The Hot Sauce Festival, which focuses on hot sauces made in New England and the Northeast, has attracted a truly surprising amount of interest, DiSaverio said.
“We have around 60 vendors total,” he said. “So we have 30 hot sauce vendors, and I’m not exaggerating when I say the wait list is over 30. It’s crazy the interest we’ve gotten from the hot sauce community. We’re a New Hampshire company, but I consider New England to be our home state, our home region. And there’s nothing else like this here. The thing about all the hot sauce festivals [I’ve been to] were they were all totally different except for the fact that they were all super well-attended and everyone was happy.”
DiSaverio said one of the guiding principles of the New England Hot Sauce Festival is that it should be a family-friendly, inclusive event.
“I wanted to have a real community feel and my spin on it is the whole-family aspect,” he said. “A lot of hot sauce festivals have become drinking festivals. There’s no liquor, there’s no wine, and there’s no outside beer other than the Smuttynose beer on site. It’s totally intended for … families. So we have bouncy houses, we have face painting, and we have a kids’ magic show.”
“There are four official eating contest events,” DiSaverio said. “Three of them are amateur-level and one of them is professional. So the amateur ones are a Jalapeño Speed Contest, to see who can eat a pound of jalapenos the fastest. Then we’ve got our Hot Wing Contest, which is five different rounds of progressively hotter chicken wings. And then we have the Super Hot Competition and that is hot peppers straight from Ed Curry’s farm in South Carolina. Ed Curry is the owner of Pucker-Butt Pepper Co., which is such a great name. And he is the creator of the Carolina Reaper pepper and more recently Pepper X, which beat the Carolina Reaper as the hottest pepper in the world. So all of these peppers are coming straight from his farm.”
To compete in the Super Hot Competition, contestants need to submit an application, including a resume to prove their bona fides.
“I’m someone who’s got a crazy high tolerance,” DiSaverio said, “but if I had a bite of a Carolina Reaper — which I have — a bite of one will knock you out for at least a day. You will be dealing with that for a long time. So the fact that some of these people can eat over 50 of them is just a whole another level of insanity.”
That said, DiSaverio made it clear that the Festival is not just for chili-head thrill-seekers.
“You don’t even, like, have to like spicy things to have a good time,” he said. “There are so many contests to watch, there’s beer to drink, and of the actual food vendors — the nine food trucks we have — none are spicy or hot-themed. They’re all very different. You can come to a hot sauce festival, have no hot sauce, and still have an amazing, amazing time.”
4th Annual New England Hot Sauce Festival When: Saturday, July 26, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Where: Smuttynose Brewery, 105 Towle Farm Road, Hampton, 601-8200, smuttynose.com Tickets: General admission tickets are $15; VIP tickets are $20. Visit newenglandhotsaucefest.com.
Nashua Summer Stroll offers food, music, dancing and more
Her official title is Communications and Events Specialist for the Mayor’s office, but one of Kathleen Palmer’s jobs is to plan very large parties. A case in point is this weekend’s Summer Stroll in downtown Nashua, which will take place along Main Street from 3 to 8 p.m. this Saturday, July 26.
“We’re very excited,” Palmer said, “to double the footprint of last year’s hugely successful event. This is the second time we’ve held this event. Last year, we thought it would be fun to create a warm-weather version of the popular Winter Stroll that is put on by Great American Downtown. So the City of Nashua Economic Development Division created this version. We weren’t sure how many people would come to a summer event, but we were very pleasantly surprised.” In fact, the attendance at last year’s event was estimated to be around 4,000 people.
This year’s Stroll will shut down much of downtown for a block party with games, prizes and live music, Palmer said.
“This will go from the intersection of Factory and Temple streets on Main, all the way down to Eldridge Street, which some locals will know as Bagel Alley. Last year we partnered with Positive Street Art to have a large local artists’ and makers’ area, where people could share their talents with the attendees. This year we have expanded to have other businesses and nonprofits attending as well.”
More than a dozen food vendors and food trucks are slated to be on site. As listed on the Summer Stroll Facebook page (search for “Nashua Summer Stroll” on Facebook), these will include: Pureni Tea (purenitea.com), The Frosty Pedal (a bicycle-powered ice cream vendor, thefrostypedal.com), The Donut Shack (specialists in apple cider doughnuts, facebook.com/thedonutshacknh), Berry Sweets (dealers in chocolate covered fruit, berrysweetsft.com), Soel Sistas (comfort food specialists, soelsistas.com), Travelin’ Tom’s Coffee (a full-service coffee shop on wheels, travelintomscoffee.com), Oh Sugar Shack (fresh-squeezed lemonade and walking snacks), Alltown Fresh (Upscale coffee and sandwiches, alltownfresh.com), Bubble Bee Milk Tea (Boba tea and dumplings – facebook.com/Bubblebeemilktea), Pete’s Push Carts, Hazy Ice Cream (facebook.com/hazyicecreamllc), Biria Gordita Tacos (@birriagorditatacos on instagram), and Holly’s Kona Ice (shaved ice treats, facebook.com/HollysKonaIce).
One of the biggest changes to this year’s Summer Stroll, Palmers said, is what will be available for children.
“We also very much underestimated how successful the Kids Zone would be last year,” she said. “We just had some fun things for kids to do on High Street, at the corner of Main, but it got so overwhelmingly busy that we have now moved it down to be closer to the Bagel Alley end of the event so we can have a much more expanded footprint. There will be a gaming van — that’s a 30-foot van [where] you can go into air-conditioned comfort and play some video games if you need a break. We’re also going to have police horses for the kids to meet this year, and the ActorSingers are going to put on a performance from their upcoming kids’ show. Positive Street Art is bringing back their inflatable Paint Splatter Tent, which will be down in the Kids Zone.”
One goal of the Summer Stroll, Palmer said, is to inspire neighborhoods throughout Nashua to host their own block parties.
“We really want neighborhoods to start doing kind of old-timey block parties together. “We’d really love it if some of the other neighborhoods in town would also start doing things like this. Just get to know your neighbors, get together.”
Nashua Summer Stroll According to a press release from the Mayor’s Office, “nearly 80 vendor tents, many food trucks and treat purveyors, and activities will be set up on Main Street for attendees to walk around and enjoy starting at 3 p;m. Main Street will be closed to vehicular traffic at 1:30 p.m. … Main Street will reopen to traffic at 9 p.m.”
Live music starts at 3:30 p.m. on the main stage, which will be set up at the Pearl/Main intersection. 3:30-4:30 p.m.: The FAR gets the energy going with hot hits and pop favorites. 4:30-5 p.m.: Theo Martinez, HTM Dance, will give free dance lessons right in the street. 5-6 p.m.: El Grupo Chevere takes the stage – now you can use what you learned. 6:30-8 p.m.: 4 R Souls drives it home with expert precision covers of classic rock. Positive Street Art will hold “The Official After-Party of the Nashua Summer Stroll” at Martha’s Exchange (185 Main St.), beginning right after the live outdoor music. Tickets available online at shorturl.at/R66gV. Visit eventhub.net/events/Nashua-Summer-Stroll-2025_6345.
• New place to get Brazilian groceries: Popular Nashua market Sky Market and Butcher Shop has opened a second store in Manchester (388 Wilson St., Manchester, 809-1283, skymarket.site). Its website describes it as an authentic source of “Latin flavors at a fair price and true quality.” It is open Monday through Saturday, from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sundays until 8 p.m.
• New spot for high-end coffee: William and Sons Coffee is opening a second location in Manchester at 814 Elm St., in the Beacon Building. The official ribbon-cutting ceremony will take place at 2 p.m. Tuesday, July 29. William and Sons specializes in expertly made coffee beverages, as well as teas, matchas and pastries. Visit wsonscoffee.com.
• Social districts: As reported by the Concord Monitor in an article by Sruthi Gopalakrishnan on July 9, adults will soon be able to drink alcoholic drinks in public in certain designated areas in New Hampshire. According to the text of HB 467, which Gov. Ayotte signed into law the week of July 7, on-premise licensees (such as restaurants, brew pubs and cocktail lounges) can sell drinks that can be consumed in a “social district,” an area that a city or town designates as such during specific hours. The bill also lays out the way a city or town can create a social district. The law goes into effect in September. See gc.nh.gov/house to read the full text of the law.
• Save the date: Southern New Hampshire Food Truck Festival will take place on Saturday, Aug. 2, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, Aug. 3, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., at the Hampshire Dome (34 Emerson Road in Milford). Tickets cost $6 at the gate, according to gnefoodtruckfest.com. Kids age 14 and under get in free. The fest will feature live music, craft beer and cocktails, more than 50 vendors, according to the website.
• Dinner in Northern Italy: Tuscan Market (Tuscan Village, 9 Via Toscana, Salem, 912-5467, tuscanbrands.com) will host a Demo Dinner, Friday, July 25, beginning at 6 p.m. In this Northern Italian Summer Dinner, learn about regional Italian wines while dining on a three-course meal by Chef Jarrett Kellerman and Wine Director Joseph Comforti. Tickets are $120 each through the Tuscan Market website. Visit tuscanbrands.com/store/events.
Getting fancy and keeping it simple with summer’s favorite dish
Former governor Chris Sununu was a bit of a hot dog purist.
“He always ordered the same thing,” Gretchen Peters remembered, “a plain hot dog with yellow mustard.”
Peters owns and operates Puppy Love Hot Dogs on Main Street in Concord, across the street from the Statehouse. She has spent much of her life serving hot dogs to customers from her cart.
“This is a second-generation family-owned and -operated business,” she said. “We’re in our 47th season. My parents started the business in 1978, right here in this little alleyway on Main Street in Concord.”
Hot dog season
In the winter Peters sells hot dogs out of a storefront, but during warm weather her cart is located just off the sidewalk and all her customers are on foot.
“[A hot dog is] the cheapest fastest lunch on Main Street,” she said, “so I have lots of regulars, who have their regular orders. I know their orders probably better than I know their names.” She describes her style of hot dogs as “a New England classic.”
Mr. Hot Dog. Photo by John Fladd.
According to Peters, hot dogs are part of our culture. “We’re really … seasonal people,” she said. “Like, we wait for strawberry season, blueberry season, corn on the cob, lobster rolls. This is hot dog season. I think I’m lucky that my customers do come and support me throughout the year. So in the wintertime I do probably sell more chili dogs because it is comfort food. When one of my customers had a hard day or whatever, they’ll come in and they’ll say, ‘I need some hot dog therapy.’ It just makes you feel better, because it’s something that you grew up [with]; you kind of crave whatever you grow up with. There are different dogs — like if people ask for Red Snappers, they’re from Maine, or a Coney Island dog, or a Chicago dog — it just depends on where you grow up.”
According to Peters, hot dogs are part of our culture. “We’re really … seasonal people,” she said. “Like, we wait for strawberry season, blueberry season, corn on the cob, lobster rolls. This is hot dog season. I think I’m lucky that my customers do come and support me throughout the year. So in the wintertime I do probably sell more chili dogs because it is comfort food. When one of my customers had a hard day or whatever, they’ll come in and they’ll say, ‘I need some hot dog therapy.’ It just makes you feel better, because it’s something that you grew up [with]; you kind of crave whatever you grow up with. There are different dogs — like if people ask for Red Snappers, they’re from Maine, or a Coney Island dog, or a Chicago dog — it just depends on where you grow up.”
Candia Road Brewing Co. There are currently seven hot dogs on the menu: a traditional hot dog, a Seattle dog, a New York-style dog, an Omaha dog, and three varieties of Vietnamese-style bánh mì dogs. The hot dogs are made with all-beef franks, and traditional New England split-top buns are grilled. Where: 840 Candia Road, Manchester More: 935-8123, candiaroadbrewingco.com
A proper dog
According to James Malik, the taste and texture of a hot dog sets it apart from most other sausages. Malik is a career butcher, working at Wicked Good Butchah in Bedford. He said a smooth texture is a hallmark of a hot dog and is difficult to achieve without specialized equipment.
“To make sausages,” Malik said, “you need something called a bowl chopper, to give you a proper hot dog texture. You’re looking for a very smooth texture. When you cut open a hot dog, there won’t be little chunks inside. The meat has been chopped down until it’s completely smooth, to an almost paté-like texture. A bowl chopper is a machine with a rotating bowl that minces meat much finer than a typical meat grinder. It’s also where the spices and flavors are added.” This increases a hot dog’s consistency, he explained; there will not be any pops of flavor.
“It’s kind of how it’s always been done,” Malik continued. “You also need to ask yourself what kind of casing [skin] you want to use, or if you’re going to smoke it. There’s a couple of different directions you could go.”
Puppy Love Hot Dogs Steamed beef/pork hot dogs on traditional New England split-top buns. Where: 50 N. Main St., Concord, across the street from the Statehouse Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. More: puppylovehotdogs.com
A dog for all tastes
The staff at Candia Road Brewing Co. in Manchester likes how many directions it’s possible to take a hot dog in.
“We crank out really good hot dogs here,” said Candia Road co-owner Graham Rissel. “We have some standards on our menu that aren’t standard for a lot of other places. Like we have a Banh Mi dog, we have an Omaha dog, which is like pastrami, Swiss, Thousand Island and some black pepper. It’s really good. We do a really good job.”
The secret to a really good hot dog, Rissel said, is grilling it on a flat-top, rather than boiling or steaming it.
“We grill the bun and we grill the dog,” he said. This gives both a buttery sear, he explained. The brewery uses traditional New England split-top buns, which lie flat on their sides on the grill. Most of Candia Road’s hot dogs are made with all-beef franks, he said, though vegan dogs can be substituted in many of their iterations.
While there are usually three different types of hot dogs on the menu at Candia Road, Rissel said, once a year the brewery goes a little hot dog crazy.
“Every year we have what we call Weenie Weekend where we release our — we call it a wiener lager, but it’s a Vienna lager style beer — and then we put on like a lot of hot dogs. We usually have over 20 hot dogs on the menu, all different styles that are really crazy and funky, and then we have a big day where we just have only hot dogs. We sell them here and it’s good.”
Coming up with creative hot dogs for Wienie Weekend involves the entire Candia Road staff, Rissel said.
“We were just joking about that, actually,” he said. “So Mike, our head brewer, his wife was texting him with some crazy ideas that she was coming up with. But really it’s just kind of like a collaborative thing. We had a chimichurri dog on that menu last year. [Chimichurri is a South American sauce made from freshly ground herbs.]
“And then we had a queso dog,” Rissel continued, “with sausage, like chorizo. We make legit queso [cheese] sauce. Usually it’s just kind of like we spitball, to come up with ideas. We have a nori dog, which has seaweed and a Japanese-style dog. But if we like something else, we try to figure out how to put it onto a dog. We did a fried rice dog last year. We thought, ‘Everyone likes fried rice. Let’s put fried rice on a hot dog, you know?’ It worked out pretty good.”
This year’s Wienie Weekend menu is still up in the air, Rissel said.
“There’s been some discussion,” he said. “There were some dog ideas that aren’t going to make the final cut and I won’t be going on record just how bad some of these ideas were. No, there’s some good ideas they got. Because what I say might not make the final cut, and then I’ll be the guy who had the bad opinion,” Rissel said.
Hare of the Dawg Currently has eight hot dogs on the menu. All are made with gas-grilled all-beef franks, served on grilled split-top brioche buns. Customer suggestions are taken seriously. Where: 3 E. Broadway, Derry More: 552-3883, hareofthedawgnh.com
Classic dogs
At Hare of the Dawg in Derry, the approach to hot dogs is more conventional, said owner Kevin Decker, but taken just as seriously, though the restaurant isn’t actually named after them.
“The name of the business is kind of a dog theme,” he said. “It’s not a hot dog theme per se, but we’re just very dog-friendly. A lot of things on our menu have dog names. Hot dogs became kind of a specialty as more and more customers asked for them. We ended up creating a great menu with a lot of different hot dogs. Some of them are named after dogs I’ve had and dogs other people have brought in, but we make everything from scratch, including a true Chicago dog, which a lot of people don’t do in the area.”
Decker said that while it’s easy to find hot dogs at many area restaurants it can be challenging to find really good ones.
“We felt there was a need,” he said. “We went to a lot of places that had hot dogs on their menu. Eventually we found a really, really good beef dog that we liked after trying a lot of different ones and just designed different names and different style dogs. So it’s been popular, and we’ve expanded that menu based on the customers’ requests. I think it’s one of those things, where once you get people that learn to expect a good dog then they’ve got suggestions where to go from there.”
According to Decker, hot dogs have a no-nonsense authenticity that suits his customers.
“We are a downtown, blue-collar bar,” he said. “It’s a working man’s bar. We’re not fancy, but everything we make is made in-house. Obviously we don’t make the hot dog itself, but we prepare it.”
Hare of the Dawg also uses an all-beef hot dog and cooks it on a gas grill.
“We grill it on an actual grill,” Decker said. “And we use a top-split, grilled brioche roll; that really is kind of a game-changer for the dog. It’s a richer flavor. It’s just nice, you know.”
“One of the specials this weekend will be a bacon-wrapped, deep-fried hot dog with cheese melted on the top and onions on it, on a brioche roll. Right now it’s raw onions, but I think caramelized onions would go along with the bacon.”
Wicked Good Butchah Where: 209 Route 101, Bedford More: wickedgoodbutchah.com
Dogs for a cause
Hot dogs play a big role in Robert Bergin’s life. He is one of the organizers of NH Hot Dogz for ALZ, a fundraising event for the Alzheimer’s Association. Once per year — usually in June, which is Alzheimer’s & Brain Awareness Month — Bergin and his team sell hot dogs. According to act.alz.org, to date, the hot dog event has raised almost $100,000.
Puppy Love Hot Dogs. Photo by John Fladd.
“We started in 2016,” Bergin remembered, “and we started with the silly idea that we would sell hot dogs. And we sold about 300 the first year. And then the team grew, and we started expanding the ideas of awareness, and we have progressed to the point where we have eight exhibitors, and the hot dog event became the memory that created the environment that generated 1,200 people showing up on the same day. We have a drive-thru, which helps us not be as crowded at our main tent. We can seat about 120 people at a time.”
“When we open on what is the last Thursday of every June we’re ready for 120 guests immediately, and we have probably 300 hot dogs made when we open at 11 [a.m.],” he said. “There are companies that come by and buy 50 bags. A bag for us is $5 and you get two hot dogs in the bag and an additional bag of chips. We sold 2,700 hot dogs this year.”
For Bergin, hot dogs are a solid way to raise money, but they are also a simple, pure concept that guests with memory issues can wrap their heads around.
“The simplicity of our event is what I try to drive home to people,” he said. “The whole event could be the menu. The menu is the memory. The memory is what is going for someone who has Alzheimer’s. So if you take the memory of a hot dog and you keep it simple, like we do, you help build a new memory.”
NH Hot Dogz for ALZ Fundraising event Where: Merrimack When: every year at the end of June
Annika’s Hot Dogs Serves boiled and steamed kosher all-beef franks, as well as vegan hot dogs. Where: at Annika’s father’s barber shop, Hair Biz Salon, 4 N. Main St., Concord
The vegan dog
Hot dog enthusiasts in Concord have two choices of hot dog stands on Main Street. Three blocks or so south of Puppy Love Hot Dogs, Annika Holden runs Annika’s Hot Dogs with her father, David.
“I’ve been here for about five years,” Annika said. “I sell hot dogs, vegan dogs, sausages, smoky maple sausages, mac and cheese on top of a hot dog, and pulled pork on top of a hot dog.”
David said Annika’s vegan hot dogs set her stand apart.
“I think that she’s the only person that we know of in Concord that sells a vegan dog,” he said. “There’s a vegan population here, and they do not want a hot dog; they want a vegan dog. So when we cook the vegan dogs, Annika cooks them separate from the hot dogs, because that’s also something the customers insist on. We get a lot of out-of-towners who like vegan dogs. Then, there are some people who don’t realize she sells vegan dogs.”
Aside from her plant-based hot dogs, Annika sells all-beef kosher hot dogs — which were very popular with Gov. Sununu, who, unsurprisingly, always ordered a plain dog with yellow mustard.
David Cortes is a full-time hot dog man. His food truck, Mr. Hot Dog, can be found near the Nashua Airport parking lot. He is fiercely loyal to his favorite brand of hot dog. “It’s an all-beef hot dog,” he said, “Kirkland’s brand. I’ve tried others like Hebrew Nationals, Nathan’s, Ballparks, and nothing holds up like a Kirkland hot dog. It’s the best hot dog you can eat.”
During the summer Cortes steams his hot dogs, but during cold weather he often grills them on a flat-top griddle. “At that point,” he said, “it’s up to the customer if they want them grilled; 80 percent like them grilled.”
Cortes offers mostly traditional toppings for his hot dogs, with one exception.
“My condiments are sauerkraut, onion, chopped onions, sweet relish, mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup, and hot sauce,” he said. He was surprised, though, at how many customers asked him for mayonnaise. “It’s mostly people from South America,” he said. “I think it originated from Brazil, but Colombians, people from Peru, and even Mexico love loading up their hot dogs with it.”
Another condiment Cortes never expected to offer is celery salt.
“That was something I had to learn,” he said. “Born and raised in New York City, I’d never seen celery salt on a cart. I’d never even tried it, you know, to this day. But the first day that I was in business, a customer asked, ‘You have celery salt?’ And I looked at him like he was nuts, but a week later I had celery salt on the cart, because you know I have to try to have everything that the customers want.”
Unlike many other hot dog businesses, Cortes only offers spicy brown mustard.
“It’s not a yellow,” he said. “It’s not a Dijon. It’s just a regular deli mustard. My customers love it. Very few ask for a yellow mustard.”
Cortes likes to build a hot dog from the condiments up.
“I put sauerkraut, onions and relish at the bottom,” he said. “It’s just a neater hot dog. Once I have those dressings there, I put the hot dog over it and then I dress it up with either ketchup, mustard, or both, mayonnaise, whatever the customer wants. That way the condiments don’t go all over the place when you try biting into it. They just stay put.”
Mr. Hot Dog All-beef hot dogs are steamed. Regular-size dogs are served on a standard New England-style split-top bun. Jumbo dogs are served on a 7-inch side-split bun. Where: Charron Ave., Nashua, near the Nashua Airport parking lot Hours: Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. More: 333-7323
