“The hot dog New Yorkers relish!” One can’t travel to NYC or other large eastern seaboard cities without seeing the ubiquitous blue and yellow flag or umbrella over a corner push-cart hawking Sabrett’s famous hot dogs. Around since 1916, the Sabrett’s line is available from hot dog carts, convenience stores, delis nationwide, but still a little hard to find in most areas. If you want to order some direct, there is an etailer that will ship them to you.
If you are inclined to go into the hot dog cart business, here’s a resource for all things concerning that.
Or if you just want to find the nearest hot dog stand to your house, check out this interactive directory (which, regretfully, one can’t search by brand name!)
I hadn’t even thought of searching for Sabrett’s in Portland, because we have so many good, mom & pop local sausage shops. But lo and behold, one of our hundreds of glorious street food carts has started offering them, so I went to check them out.
Bro-Dogs, at the corner of SW 5th and Stark (and also you will find them on the sidewalk, late night, weekends, 3rd and Burnside) (I last saw them in front of Dante’s) offers a variety of Sabretts and other sausages. As usual, I went looking for the kind that comes wrapped in an intestine (natural casing), and Bro-Dogs satisfied my aching hunger with a solid ten-incher. Slightly char-grilled, and served on a most “interesting” bun, I asked for mine plain, and dressed it as I always do, with chopped onion and mustard.
This guy knows his hot dogs, having grown up in Chicago. He even has celery salt on the condiment table, an homage to a Chicago dog if I ever saw one. He lacks the sport peppers and neon relish that Chicago dogs sport, but hell, these are Sabretts, so no need for the fancy stuff.
I asked him about the “bun”, which is a piece of bread he does on the grill. He explained that the major flaw in hot dog buns is that they fall apart (come unsplit), and that’s true. So he found a local baker which sells what the baker describes as “ciabatta bagel bread,” and tho I was leery (I like cheap buns, they take ten inchers easily), the toasted bread wrap was pretty fine, held up well, and one could have loaded it with messy condiments and it would survive, I am sure.
Most local restaurants try to buy local, and altho the dogs are from NY, Bro-Dogs condiment table is chock-a-block full of relishes and mustards from Beaverton Foods, our local mustard giant. So kudos for that.
Sabretts makes a great dog. Portland is a great hot dog town, and you should stop by Bro-Dogs and give him a try. $4 covers the ten incher and a bag of chips. It’s a deal.
Looking at the pic below, you can tell the stand is still a ‘work in progress.” But the dogs he has fine tuned, believe me. Been there, ate a dog, got the t-shirt!
Portland Hot Dog Crawl Map
View Portland Hot Dog Crawl in a larger map
Pingback: Twitted by pdxpedpow