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.”
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.
“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
