A Field Guide to the Great Hot Dogs of America

Summer is high season for the hot dog, from backyard grills to ballparks to the finest roadside joints. Across the United States, hot dogs exhibit a striking diversity that reflects the microclimates in which they’ve evolved ever since the 1860s, when an entrepreneurial immigrant introduced the species from Germany. Here we take a wide-ranging, but admittedly inexhaustive, look at some of the varieties you may encounter in the wild.

New York Dog

NATURAL HABITAT The Big Apple

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES All beef, with sauerkraut and spicy brown mustard

New York State is a epicenter of American hotdoggery, home to beloved hyperlocal wieners like Syracuse’s Snappy Grillers, micro-regional variants like the three-inchers of Troy, and destination footlongs like those grilled over coals at Ted’s in Buffalo. Still, New York City lays claim to the defining dogs: not the dirty-water type, but the kosher franks puckering on the griddles at Nathan’s Famous in Coney Island, pastrami-slinging delis and storefronts with “Papaya” in their names. Tomato-stained “onions in sauce” is a worthy condiment, but spicy brown mustard with either sauerkraut (for traditionalists) or relish (for swashbucklers) is the move. Tales are even told of those who take both.

Texas Tommy

NATURAL HABITAT The Delaware Valley, oddly

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES Bacon and cheese

In the grand tradition of misleading hot dog names, this mid-20th century creation hails not from the Lone Star State but, reportedly, from Pottstown, Pa. It may have taken its name from a Ragtime dance that was as indecorous then as the topping combo may seem today. Now you can get one from Wilmington, Del., (at Johnnie’s Dog House & Chicken Shack, it’s bacon-wrapped in the original fashion) to Philadelphia (at Steve’s Prince of Steaks, you’ll find a split wiener topped with bacon strips and whiz). The region’s other contender, a fried fish cake on a dog, doesn’t stand a chance.

Slaw Dog

NATURAL HABITAT The South

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES The slaw

In West Virginia, which lays claim to masterminding the topping way back in the 1920s, it’s often paired with hot dog sauce (or, as some might identify it, chili). In North Carolina, it could come piled on an electric-red, locally revered Bright Leaf dog. The dog is nearly vermilion at Nu-Way Weiners, a Macon, Ga., destination since 1916, where the slaw atop the chili is cold, creamy and finely chopped. So, too, is the topping at the Varsity in Atlanta, where it’s a valid move to skip the chili and order an all-beef frank crowned with just slaw.

Puerto Rican-Style Dog

NATURAL HABITAT The island’s many stands and carts

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES No topping spared

Puerto Rico is rich with carts selling hot dogs adorned in the Boricua style. These low-key setups belie the joys of this frank, which is decked out with some version of virtually every standard topping: Squirts of mustard, ketchup and cheese sauce join forces with layers of sauerkraut, onions and carne molida (ground beef cooked with sofrito that plays the role of chili). Finally, there are crunchy potato sticks, the crown that turns this variety into dog royalty.

The Sonoran

NATURAL HABITAT Arizona in general, Tucson in particular

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES The best kind of fusion

The name nods to the leading theory of its provenance: Sonora, the Mexican state just across the border. But spend enough time in metro Phoenix or Tucson and you’ll see that his extravagant dog is Arizonan to the core. The “dogueros” who operate the mobile outfits (like El Sabroso in Phoenix) and griddles (Los Chipilones in Tucson) don’t hold back. In a roll that clocks in somewhere between bolillo and bun, there are pinto beans, diced tomatoes and onions, as well as stripes of mustard, drizzles of green salsa and squiggles of mayo. Under there somewhere is a hot dog wrapped in bacon and on the side, a little gift — a couple of charred yellow chiles.

The Ripper

NATURAL HABITAT North Jersey

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES Deep-fried perfection

The paradigmatic New Jersey dog is defined by its cooking method, a bath in hot oil that transforms a natural-casing frank into the blistered archetype of ugly-delicious. Some North Jersey legends specialize in the ultimate version: rippers. The default at Hiram’s Roadstand in Fort Lee and an option at Rutt’s Hut in Clifton, they are fried until they burst and new nooks and crags emerge to char as crisp as cracklings. Chili-cheese, relish and mustard are all welcome. A highly honorable mention goes to the Italian Dog, invented in Newark at the original Jimmy Buff’s: Two links are fried, stuffed in “pizza bread” and buried under cooked peppers, onions and crispy potato.

New York System

NATURAL HABITAT Rhode Island, strangely

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES Meat sauce, strict parameters and a touch of flair

Don’t let the “New York” fool you — these are pure Rhode Island, and rival Chicago dogs in their particularity. The midcentury brainchild of the Original New York System restaurant, they are also called hot wieners, gaggers and Greek lobsters, though never hot dogs. At places that carry on the tradition, staffers deftly prepare them “on the arm,” lining up steamed, slightly sweet buns from Homestead Baking Company on their forearms and filling them with wieners made from veal, beef and pork. They are then dressed with mustard, “meat sauce” (what an outsider might call chili), raw onions and a flurry of celery salt. That’s “all the way,” and with a glass of coffee milk on the side, it’s the only way.

Chicago Dog

NATURAL HABITAT The Windy City and its environs

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES “The garden”

Regional hot dog tradition at its most precise, the Chicago dog is an improbable masterpiece, whether you’re peacefully taking down a boiled version at Superdawg Drive-In or ordering a char dog while you get roasted by the staff at the Wiener’s Circle. It’s “dragged through the garden,” which means topped with exactly seven items that doting partisans can rattle off without hesitation: yellow mustard, relish (customarily a neon green), chopped white onions, tomato slices, a pickle spear, pickled sport peppers and celery salt. The foundation beneath is also imperative: a natural casing, all beef (nearly always from the local wiener maestros at Vienna Beef), tucked inside a poppy-seed bun.

Half Smoke

NATURAL HABITAT Washington, D.C.

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES A special sausage

Underneath the blanket of saucy chili and beyond the chopped onions and yellow mustard that are vital to a Half Smoke served “all the way” is the signature sausage that defines this capital classic. While the smoky, slightly spicy pork-and-beef links were invented as breakfast fare at the Weenie Beenie, they are now available at establishments throughout the city. But no purveyor is more famous than Ben’s Chili Bowl, the U Street monument to meat. Technically, its Half Smoke is more sausage than hot dog, but it’s so good that we don’t care.

Cheese Coney

NATURAL HABITAT The chili parlors of Cincinnati

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES The city’s famous (or infamous) chili

This Midwestern standout wields a familiar trinity: chopped onion, a stripe of mustard, a sauce of finely ground beef. But it is then topped with a prodigal pile of shredded Cheddar. Adherents who haunt parlors like Skyline and Camp Washington scoff at the it’s-not-chili complaints, celebrating the sauce’s distinctive spicing of nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon — and the miraculous merging of Mediterranean and Slavic flavors with early-20th-century American tastes. That said, they also take theirs on spaghetti, so the jury’s still out.

Seattle Dog

NATURAL HABITAT The food carts of Seattle

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES Hot frank, cool cream cheese

Outsiders sometimes wince at the thought of Seattle Dogs. Even some locals consider them fit only for a post-boozing binge. Yet there they are, cream cheese-slathered buns hosting hot dogs. Lore has it that the creation is a good three decades old, invented by a bagel purveyor named Hadley Longe. He opened a bagel cart in Pioneer Square, and soon after began offering dogs served with a schmear on bialy rolls, begetting imitators galore who swapped in buns. Griddled onions — possibly a nod to the onions on bialys — complete the style.

Coneys

NATURAL HABITAT Michigan

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES Not just another chili dog with mustard and raw white onion

Coney Island is the name for the dogs, the whole category of restaurants that sell them, and the place that inspired their originator, a Greek immigrant (either Gust Keros or George Todoroff, depending on whom you ask) who passed through the hot dog hub of New York City on his way west. Michiganders differ, with Midwestern politeness, over Coney particulars: In Detroit, the Coney sauce at the stalwarts American Coney Island and Lafayette Coney Island has a fluidity that makes staining your shirt inevitable. In Flint, locals call the sauce “dry” as a compliment, while the city of Jackson has its own variation, with differences so subtle they’re nearly undetectable by outsiders. Most everyone seems to agree on the supremacy of Koegel’s brand dogs and the necessity of beef heart in the chili.

Bologna Dog

NATURAL HABITAT The Jewish delis of Baltimore

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES Beef two ways

The heyday of Baltimore’s Jewish delis has passed, but the legacy lives on, at least at Attman’s Deli, one of the last vestiges of East Lombard Street’s Corned Beef Row, and the Essen Room in nearby Pikesville. Both still offer the duet of emulsified meats that’s become known as Baltimore’s hot dog. Slices of griddled beef bologna on an all-beef frank is a textural lark and, as the beloved local historian Gilbert Sandler noted “grease from the bologna mixes with the grease from the hot dog, and both find their way into the bread.” What sounds like redundancy is actually profundity.

Polish Boy

NATURAL HABITAT Cleveland

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES Kielbasa à la barbecue

Long ago, Clevelanders said “Polish boy” and meant kielbasa, the garlicky smoked sausage beloved by the Polish immigrants who arrived in the city in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today the term refers to this sloppy sensation, a glorious fusion. Propelled by local Black-owned smoked-meat concerns like Virgil Whitmore Sr.’s Mt. Pleasant Bar-B-Q, cooks began to furnish the city’s hallowed sausage with the toppings on hand: coleslaw, a pile of fries and plenty of barbecue sauce.

Reindeer Dog

NATURAL HABITAT Alaska

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES A delicately gamy link, Coca-Cola onions

In the summer of 1892, Capt. Michael Healy brought back the first reindeer from Siberia as a new food source for hungry Alaskans. That same summer, Nathan Handwerker (the founder of Nathan’s Famous) was born. Coincidence? Well, yes. All the same, today Alaska’s on-a-bun benefaction is a dog made with lean, delicately gamy reindeer. The consummate rendition comes from Yeti Dogs in Anchorage, where the link teams up with another Alaskan hot dog tradition: sautéed onions spiked with Coca-Cola.