The First Bacon Wrapped Hot Dog
By Georgia - Thursday April 17th 2008 |
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Note: Please welcome Georgia into the fold. Georgia, our latest food guinea pig critic, embodies the precise elements we yearn for in a writer here at Losanjealous: namely, questionable gastronomic sensibilities and a longing for adventure. Enough chatter, on with the goods. -ed
You don’t plan on eating a bacon wrapped hot dog for dinner…you just don’t. Upon settling in to a quite night in front of the television, you don’t answer your honey’s question of “What do you feel like having for dinner?” with “Ohhh, I dunno…I’m kinda in the mood for greasy street food of questionable health code standards. What about you?”
In fact, I think it would be sacrilegious to eat a bacon wrapped hot dog (aka b-wrapped hot dog, hot dog wrapped in bacon, and “whatever is emitting that delicious smell outside [insert dive bar or music venue] after last-call”) anywhere but standing next to the cart that sold you your meat-wrapped-in-meat delicacy, or in your car.
I have found myself outside said dive bars and music venues after last call on many, many occasions. I’ve been hungry the majority of these instances, and have even uttered an audible “Mmmmm” when confronted with the smell of pig fat and onions frying in a puddle of grease. But, for reasons too numerous to list, I had never had a bacon wrapped hot dog. Not even a bite!!! Can you believe it?
I’ve lived in Los Angeles for close to six years, and have been frequenting the sorts of haunts that the makers of the delicacy flock to for over ten years…but the time was never right, or I had no cash, or someone uttered the two words that can make me forget whatever was previously occupying my mind: “taco truck”.
So it was with great excitement that I ventured out on a balmy Wednesday night with the sole purpose of finally, once-and-for-all, consuming a b-wrapped hot dog. Like I mentioned earlier though, it’s not that simple. Yes, I knew where I could find a cart a mere minutes drive from my house. I had cash on me, I was hungry…but part of the experience known as “eating a hot dog wrapped in bacon” was that it was consumed while somewhat inebriated, on a whim, and as an end to a night of debaucherous fun.
Below are some highlights from the night, which were just frosting on the pig intestine, artery clogging cake. Feel free to print these out and use them as guidelines the next time you’re craving something that’s sure to make you feel worse about yourself in the morning than that time you woke up next to your best friend’s boyfriend.
The Cha Cha
- Consume two whiskey on the rocks
- Loudly judge people while sitting on the bench against the wall which, in this case, acts as something of a throne for you and your best friend
- Accept the offer from two cute, but painfully young gentlemen to join them in a game of foosball…which you lose, utterly and without a hint of embarrassment
- Squeeze into the photo booth with aforementioned best friend because, what the hell?, we’ll only be young, cute, and drunk for so long…we may as well have proof
- In order to hinder the come-ons of the cute, but painfully young gentlemen, tell them that you need to get home to your [fictional] children. This, I guarantee, will stop them in their tracks
La Cita
- Realize that you’re a music snob when you loudly declare the music being blasted throughout the bar to be utter crap…but be totally okay with being a music snob if it means not liking utterly crappy music
- Drink a whiskey on the rocks on the patio with loud, equally inebriated friends
- Accept the offer of yet-another whiskey on the rocks but only because your best friend is talking to a cute guy and you don’t want to force her to leave before getting his number. Pat yourself on the back for sacrificing so much for your best friend’s happiness
- Smoke half a cigarette before realizing that you don’t smoke and that the cigarette is making you sick and, holy crap, you’re more tipsy than you thought, and also quite hungry, which can only mean one thing…it’s bacon wrapped hot dog time!!!
- Drag your best friend by the collar away from the cute guy (who doesn’t mention the fact that he’s in a long term relationship until the end of the conversation, the bastard!) and make her drive you toooooo…
Eat Your First Bacon Wrapped Hot Dog!!!
I think I’m in love with you.
you seem horribly confused about the definition of a “dive bar”.
Now send her to the SG Valley to order some stinky tofu. Helpful hint: in Mandarin that would be “Cho Dofu” – those are long “o”s, you know, like “tofu” with a “d.”
Should of downed it with some Crab Juice.
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Ignore that guy (Robert), that smile could light up a room. I’d say cute is an understatement.
Continuing my previous thought, I’ve never actually ordered Stinky Tofu in America, but googling around, I see that you can apparently get it at the Old Country Cafe in Alhambra.
Your best friend’s boyfriend is a lucky bastard.
i realize that i’m in the minority here when it comes to being more interested in the bacon-wrapped hot dog than the cute girl eating the hot dog, but come on, all that and no review of your first bacon-wrapped hot dog?
food critic schmood critic!!!
I think that her point may have been that, for her, the bacon-wrapped-hot dog is precisely as good or as bad as the meta-bacon-wrapped hotdog experience (very pomo, that), particularly so in the case one’s first bacon-wrapped hotdog, and even more so if the dog and the bacon that wraps it are taken as metaphors, as I think certain details in the text imply.
you just blew my mind.
i believe the correct term for these is “dirty dogs.”
Danger dogs. YUM.
WHERE DID YOU FIND THOSE?! I HAVEN’T SEEN THEM IN A LONG TIME. They are illegal now…
They’re especially good when you have a buzz at about two in the morning… or so I’ve been told.
When going on wee-hours culinary adventures, you should never be so drunk that you can’t remember what the food tasted like. Unless you remember tasting it in reverse, but then it doesn’t count.
Excellent L.A. food article. This young lady has a great sense of what our city is all about.
Max, you sound like an idiot.
Danger Dogs!
I too am an avid consumer of danger dogs… After many miserable morning-afters, I found that the little lady thats just west of the short stop on sunset is the safest late night bacon wrapped hautedaug.
Con todo!!
I have also done the same but with late night taco trucks.
Congrats! Danger Dogs are what make drunken nights in Hollywood wonderful – Well, that, and booze of course.
Your pictures have stirred up the hunger in me, so my goal for the weekend is to consume one of those puppies at 2:30am on Friday (pun intended, by the way).
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I’d hit it.
The bacon-wrapped hotdog is as important as the street burrito for the diet of any working class artist in LA. These aren’t wayward indiscretions!
They are staples.
Also, dive bars don’t have foosball tables. Or cute guys. And you don’t leave after only two drinks.
If you need to drink that bad, that cheap, you are going all in.
I miss LA, but not the hipsters.