Nick on the Town

Sacramento Hot Dog Tour: Official Results

July 6, 2011 at 4:00 pm 4 comments

Well, the wait is over. Here are the official results of the Nick on the Town Sacramento Hot Dog Tour. I put together a crack team of me and one other guy (John) and we visited 8 different hot dog establishments. We got at least one dog at each joint and then judged each one on a 1-to-10 scale of “Overall Hot Dog Experience.”

Here are the results from the stinker at the bottom to the Sacramento’s King of Weiners.

8. Urban Dog

This was the biggest surprise and the biggest disappointment of the whole group. Mostly, it was presentation and customer service issues, but the dog itself didn’t blow us away either (although the dog probably suffered because we were already mad at the place).

Even though I don’t work in a professional hot dog restaurant, If you asked me to make you a hot dog right now, I could drive to the store, buy all the fixin’s and have a tasty dog in your mouth in less than half an hour (feel free to hold me to this). Urban Dog, however, can’t make that happen.

Plus, the place is just kind of depressing inside. It’s like they’re making dogs in a jail cell; sparse decorations, a soda fountain that’s half empty and hardly any seating. Of course, the seating wouldn’t be such a big deal if it didn’t take so long to get a dog. Seriously, there were like 4 groups of people there, no one had food, everyone was pissed and the dude making the dogs and the lady at the register didn’t seem to care. Plus, one guy who was lucky enough to get a dog had to bring it back because it had “blue cheese” on it. He hadn’t ordered a dog with blue cheese on it and thought maybe it was just mold.

Also, they have like 6 dogs on the menu and a full list of burgers. A hot dog place should focus on hot dogs. Burgers slow you down…apparently.

In short, these guys need to get their act together.

Oh wait, I forgot to mention the dog. My Chicago-style dog was just ok. For some reason they put the pickle wedge perpendicular to my dog. This contradicts the hot dog’s natural mouth-friendly construction. Line up that pickle, decorate place and learn to make a hot dog in under 30 minutes.

SCORE: 1.5 Points

7. Yummy Yogurt

As a general rule of thumb, you should avoid hot dogs from hot dog places that have neither the word “hot” nor “dog” in their name. This is a frozen yogurt shop, however, I had a coupon for 2 hot dogs, a soda and a bag of chips for $3 so I pulled the trigger anyhow.

Look how tiny these dogs are though:

As you can see, I took a bite and missed the dog entirely. It was kind of a sad experience, but if you’re in a pinch and you want a tiny hot dog to go along with your frozen yogurt, you could go ahead and get this thing. It’s basically a 7-Eleven dog. This is how it made me feel:

It should be mentioned that I think I saw larger dogs on the hot dog roller, but I guess those weren’t the 2 for $3 kind.

SCORE: 2.0

6.  Burgers and Brew

This goes against my rule as well. It is not “Burgers and Brew and Hot Dogs” and after eating the dog here, I know why. Just stick to burgers (and brew), Burgers and Brew.

The “hot dogs” here are more like a smoky sausage-type thing – which I wish they would’ve been up front about on the menu because sometimes I like a smokey sausage-type thing. However, this was not a smokey sausage-type thing tour. Also, it was clearly in sandwich form and not in hot dog form. Plus, it was so big that John and I had to share it and that was embarrassing.

On the plus side, we also had some Pliny the Elders and these herbally things that are supposed to help aid digestion. After all these hot dogs, we needed all the help we could get.

SCORE: 3 Points

5. The Hot Dog Lady over by Light Rail on O Street

Sorry that I don’t know if she has a real business name or not, but the Hot Dog Lady over by Light Rail on O Street serves up a respectable enough street dog, but nothing spectacular. She offered a variety of dog and bun options, which is nice in a way, but provides a bit too much time to fill with awkward small talk. This lady must talk about the weather 200 times a day. Yes, we get it, it’s hot.

Anyhow, the dog was big and beefy and she offered kraut. Maybe it was because I had just eaten a hot dog 2 minutes earlier, but I found this one filled me up in like one bite. Also, even though it looked beefy and was a labeled as a Hebrew National, it didn’t taste like anything – just kind of a meaty mush in my mouth. I feel like maybe the dog left all its flavor in the hot dog water…which would’ve been great to wash this thing down with.  

I think it was $3 and the dog was huge, so I guess it’s still a good deal even if it tasted like wet dust.

SCORE: 4

4. The Hot Dog Lady on 9^th & Capitol

Perhaps this dog benefitted from being the first dog on the tour, but I thought it was pretty tasty. It was a nice steamed dog – one of those long skinny ones. I like a long skinny dog. John prefers the stubbier. To each his own, I guess. She had some decent condiments (two kinds of peppers) and a sassy attitude to go along with it, so I was pretty happy.

For under $3, it’s hard to argue with this weiner.

SCORE: 6

3. Raley Field and the River Cats

Nothing tastes better than a dog at the ballpark. Of course, there’s a chance that if you were to take the delicious Raley Field dog out of the ballpark environment and to, say, Urban Dog that it would be the world’s worst dog.

But on a warm summer night, there just ain’t nothing better than a dog at the ballpark.

See how happy I am:

Also, it was dollar dog night at the park when I went (Fridays) and even the smaller, sadder, cheap dog tasted great too. Sure, I had put down a few margaritas at this point, but I think it was actually good. This is not always the case. Sometimes the bun on the $1 dog is crunchy and the weiner is tasteless, so it’s kind of a crapshoot. But, hey, for a dollar you can afford to roll the dice.

SCORE: 8.5

2. The Weinery

I love this place. It’s been there forever has built up a good clientele of cool old people. They even survived a change of ownership recently without the place changing too much.

The restaurant itself is tiny and can barely contain the well-loved countertop which dominates the café. From the seats at the counter, you can watch the hot dog chefs work their magic. They actually have these little wooden paddles with pegs which are designed to hold up to 5 hot dogs in place for quick topping (Learn something here, Urban Dog).

The dogs are steamed weiners that you can top with a ridiculous amount of condiment options. I went with the Pastrami Dog and could not have been happier. Oh wait, I added a frosty mug of beer (or root beer) and I actually did get a little happier.

Here’s a little thing they call the Double Dinger. Yowzah!

This place just makes me happy and I’m never happy. Hooray for the Weinery!

SCORE: 9

1.  Capitol Dawg

This is dog heaven. The owner of this joint is a true Chicago hot dog purist. He sat down with us and talked wieners for about 20 minutes. After that, we talked about hot dogs (Please note, this is the only weiner joke in this whole post). I couldn’t believe there was so much to know about meat, buns, condiments, etc. He is very proud of his product and one bite into the Governator Dog, it was pretty easy to see why. I got half a Governator and half a Chicago.

There are about a million combinations of dogs you can get here. The aforementioned Governator is a deep-fried, bacon-wrapped weiner covered in cheese sauce. It was the most delicious dog I had on the tour or possibly in my life. You put that hot dog in a ballpark and my head would explode with happiness. The Chicago Dog was delicious and, as an added bonus, the pickle was parallel to the bun as it should be.

Here I am kissing up to the owner:

Plus, the dogs come out super-fast. Capital Dawg could make about 100 dogs in the time it takes Urban Dog to make one.

So Capitol Dog takes home the Nick on the Town Weiner Crown.

SCORE: 9.5

So there it is, the Nick on the Town Hot Dog Tour. Okay, so maybe there aren’t as many hot dog places in Sacramento as there are in Chicago, but we’ve got Capital Dawg and the Weinery proudly carrying the weiner-torch here in Sacramento. It was almost a draw between Capitol Dawg and The Weinery, but Dawg eked it out in the end.

I’d say, the Weinery feels a bit more homey and like a neighborhood joint, whereas Capital Dawg is the kind of place you send hot dog snobs who think they can only get a real hot dog in Chicago. we’ll show them. Now get out there and eat a weiner!   

Note: When word of the weiner tour got out, I had a lot of folks recommend the dog at Costco. Hey, I’ve got nothing against a huge $1.50 hot dog if I’m out stocking up on discount groceries, Dockers and home electronics, but I just can’t include it here with a clear conscience. That goes for Home Depot too where I’ve had many a delicious dog. Sorry, Costco folks. Perhaps I’ll do a tour of snack bars at big box stores and include them on there (Ikea is the front-runner already though).

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