The sign outside the "Weinerschnitzel" restaurant brags that it is "The World’s Largest Hotdog Chain." They’re certainly large enough to put an outpost all the way out at the ends of the earth on Braker Lane. I was biking and I was hungry, and there was no other sign of civilization in sight, so I stopped in.
For a restaurant that specializes in hotdogs, they have a surprisingly limited selection. But their four methods of preparing a hotdog are effectively doubled by giving the customer the choice of upgrading to all-beef for about fifty cents extra.
I opted for the most extravagant hotdog on the menu: All-beef deluxe.
At first glance it looks like a not-inaccurate facimile of a Chicago dog. There’s the giant pickle spear and some hefty slices of tomato. But even from that perspective there’s something wrong. Where’s the relish? On closer inspection it looks less like a Chicago dog and more like an alien entity mimicking a Chicago dog.
My first bite left me confused. There was such a void of taste that I thought my tongue had gone numb. So I washed out my mouth with Dr.Pepper and tried again. Once again, I completely failed to actually taste anything. The hotdog was dry and mealy. The skin was tough and callused, like the whole thing had been sitting on the bottom of a dry steam tray for days. Even the tomato was woody and the pickle wasn’t even sour.
The whole thing tasted exactly like biting into a cardboard tube that’s been stuffed with shredded newspaper.
Now I know how they got to be so big. They cut corners by selling wood-pulp.
Weinerschnitzel: Grade F
