- Gwynedd Stuart
- A lot less frightening than it looks
In this feature Gwynedd Stuart seeks out affordable midday meals that don’t exceed five bucks (*actually seven, with tax and tip).
Opening a creative hot dog restaurant in Chicago seems like a losing proposition, mostly because your restaurant will never be Hot Doug’s. This will automatically be treated as a deficiency and people will repeat the refrain like it was the chorus in a pop song about nitrite-laden meats: “It’s OK, but it’s no Hot Doug’s.” You could even try to preempt copycat criticism by calling it something like Not Hot Doug’s or Definitely Not Hot Doug’s and That’s OK!, but everyone is still going to draw the comparison. And the comparison bodes poorly for the one that isn’t Hot Doug’s.
Restaurateur Dion Antic must be a masochist. His first foray into hot dogs, Rockstar Dogs, didn’t make it. Judging from Yelp reviews and reader comments on a post Mike Sula wrote about it in 2008, people thought it was overpriced (“more expensive than Hot Doug’s”) and a subpar spin on another local hot dog joint (Hot Doug’s). Also, it had a stripper pole and after 10 PM women could “dance” for a free hot dog. Grinding one’s pelvic parts onto a cold, metal pole for processed meat products has to be one of the most depressing things I’ve ever heard. Why not just slide them, buns and all, into their underpants? If anything, it sounds like Rockstar was trying to differentiate itself, but tried too hard and maybe did it wrong.
