I’ve had a hotdog at Casino el Camino on Sixth Street before. And like all finer dining establishments, they have more than one variety of hotdog on the menu. This time I went with the chilidog.
I had this during a sparsely populated happy hour right as the kitchen opened, so I got my order in a shockingly prompt twenty minutes. You will notice that the dog comes with plastic utensils. This is because the sloppy heaps of chili and nacho cheese have far exceeded the structural load-bearing capacity of the bun. There wasn’t a single portion of this dog that could be consumed with the hands without causing a catastrophic slopping event. But submerged beneath the semi-liquid topping was a very serviceable hotdog, a meaty and thick tube of processed pig.
Casino el Camino Chilidog – Grade A minus
There’s been a proliferation of upper-end franchised burger joints in recent years. In general their menus are limited to burgers and fries, but often they will also offer a hotdog. Five Guys Burgers and Fries is a good example.
One of Five Guys gimmicks, is they offer free peanuts to customers waiting for their order. Twenty pound peanut boxes are left sitting open around the restaurant, with cute little scoops inside. While this is a nice touch in theory, in practice it means that the seating area is covered with a fine powder of peanut shells like the elephant cage at the zoo. The hotdog itself’ is split open lengthwise and grilled, which makes for a particularly flavorful dog with a crisp skin. It would have been a great hotdog experience, except that a hotdog, with fries and a drink, cost me ten dollars. This is at least a third more than any human ought to pay for this meal.
Five Guys Burgers and Fries dog – Grade C plus
Another newcomer on the burger joint scene is Mighty Fine Burgers. Their menu offers a "chopped chilidog." I saw that and thought, "hey, chopped chili must be some pretty chunky chili." Wrong. It’s the hotdog which is chopped.
I imagine that somewhere in the Mighty Fine food preparation area there is a steam tray filled with a goopy jumble of chili and little disks of hotdog. Whenever someone orders a hotdog it only takes a second to poor a ladle of the slop into a bun. The ladle that went into my bun was about 75% chili and only 25% dog. No doubt this particular dish was invented with eight-year-old boys in mind, but for a grown man the mutilated weiner is an emasculating insult. It’s too bad, because there’s some pretty decent ingredients in there.
Mighty Fine Chopped chilidog – Grade C minus
