here are some of the hotdog opportunities one might find in austin’s way over-hyped entertainment district.
the "best wurst" stand distinguishes itself as having the most stomach-turning pun for any business that’s not a hairdressers. but the food is far from stomach-turning. the all-beef wurst isn’t really a hotdog, it’s almost unfair to classify it as that. it’s more like a meat pipe, almost like a kielbasa. when you bite into it the sausage casing pops and squirts a flood of meaty juice across your tongue. the sourcraut nicely sets off the sweatly spicy wurst. two stands now, one at 6th and san ,which will have a half-block line of drunken and belligerant real-world castmembers, and one at emos.
Best Wurst: Grade A-
casino el camino is one of the last bars on 6th street that someone not wearing a shiny-shirt would bother visiting. there’s pool on the top level, weird 70s movies on the TVs, and a fry-cook kitchen in back next to the men’s room. no matter how much money you slip in the tip-jar the fry cooks will still be insanely inneffient and slow. by the time you hear the garbled shout of your name, you will have finished your first shiner and be halfway through the second, thereby allowing you to enjoy your greasy bar food all the more. by the time i got this hotdog ensemble, i was ahead of the curve on the shiner consumption so i completely forgot what it was called. i dunno, it had four words and one of them was "tommy" for some unexplained reason. this hotdog is the barfood version of that espresso drink that every independant coffeshop has, you know, the one with four shots of espresso and a wad of chocolate syrup with the incongruously macho name, like "kevorkian" or "crowbar". if you could see through the forest of bacon strips on this hotdog you would still have to peer through the slab of cheddar before you could see the two super-greasy pork dogs laid end-to-end. the service was terrible, the condiments limited, and the actual food quality mediocre, but by god there was a lot of it.
Casino El Camino: Grade B+
the hotdog king has an RV kitchen several times larger than a hotdog stand really needs to be. i ordered the "chicago dog" and was surprised to find that it was not only a foot long, but came with none of the cornicopia of condiments that one would normally associate with a chicago dog. the meat though was a delicious kosher beef and the bun was a much higher quality than the notoriously soggy chicago dogs normally merit. i would go so far as to say that the hotdog king’s buns were sourdough-esque.
on red river next to the red-eyed fly.
Hotdog King: Grade B