Nothing complements a baseball game or summer cookout quite like a hot dog.
For that we owe a debt to a similar sausage from Frankfurt, Germany (hence, “frankfurter” and “frank”) and German immigrant Charles Feltman, who is often credited with inventing the hot dog by using buns to save on plates.
But it was Polish immigrant Nathan Handwerker’s hot dog stand on Coney Island that turned the hot dog into an icon. Every Fourth of July since 1916, the very same Nathan’s has put on the International Hot Dog Eating Contest (current five-time winner Joey Chestnut took the title in 2011, downing 62 hot dogs and buns in the 10-minute face-stuffing).
Meanwhile in Windy City, the steamed or water-simmered all-beef Chicago dog (Vienna Beef, please) is still being “dragged through the garden” and served on a poppy seed bun -- absolutely without ketchup.