The Bacon-Wrapped Hot Dog: So Good It's Illegal

[randomness]

(Why am I not surprised California won't allow you to sell a grilled hot dog?)

From http://www.laweekly.com/eat+drink/dining/the-bacon-wrapped-hot-dog-so-good-its-illegal/18276/:

The Bacon-Wrapped Hot Dog: So Good It's Illegal

Jailed for selling L.A.'s famed "heart attack" dogs, licensed street vendors are fighting back

By DANIEL HERNANDEZ
Wednesday, February 6, 2008 - 10:15 am

Not quite Mexican and not quite American, the bacon-wrapped hot dog, like the city that so fervently embraces it, has a curious romance about it. You can smell one from blocks away. The grilled bacon, twisted around a wiener, is topped with grilled onions and a mountaintop of diced tomatoes, ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. Then one whole grilled green poblano chile is plopped impossibly on top. You take a bite and think, This is so good, no wonder it's illegal!

Among working-class downtown shoppers, belligerent clubgoers and adventurous foodies, devotion to the famed "heart-attack dogs" is strong and strident, a source of raw L.A. nostalgia.

"I probably saw my first one while I was trying to pick up 18-year-old girls at Florentine Gardens," says Eddie Lin, a food blogger at deependdining.com, who has rhapsodized about the bacon-wrapped dogs on local public radio.

To get them, "I go to places like the 99 Cents Only store in Reseda or other Hispanic working-class neighborhoods in the Valley. Parks are good too. It's the only street food L.A. can really claim as its own," Lin adds. "It's illegal and yet it's a ubiquitous part of L.A. culture."

Edit: It appears it's a county ordinance: "Instead, she prepares dogs the only way the county Environmental Health Department currently allows, by boiling or steaming. Not grilling. And grilling is the only way to make a classic L.A. bacon-wrapped hot dog."

Comments

[esmerel.livejournal.com]

It's illegal? Seriously? WTF. What the heck is illegal about that? I've had grilled dogs more than once.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

My bad.

Apparently it's an LA County thing. They're insane down there, I swear.

[esmerel.livejournal.com]

AH, now, see, that makes sense. They ARE crazy in LA.

[rfrancis]

Illegal??

Yes, there's something to it that's bad for your heart.

The bun. :P

(Okay, actually, I'm skeptical of hot dog wieners. They're really processed. I also mostly gave up bacon due to uncertainty over nitrites. But the implication, I suspect, is "it has meat! you'll die!" which, feh.)

(Plus, illegal??)

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I love sausages. I mean, I really do. But yeah, they're really processed.

And apparently, my bad, it's only LA County that's made grilled hot dogs illegal. But still...illegal?

Crazy.

[apintrix.livejournal.com]

Oh my goodness I want one. Maybe with a milder chile. (How hot is a poblano?)

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I dunno, but I really want to try one anyway.

LA, here I come. :)

[cerebralpaladin.livejournal.com]

I like both Chicago and New York, but one of the things I really miss about New York is street vendors. They are plentiful in NY, at least in the areas where I worked, and completely absent in Chicago (with the same caveat). When I want a quick, cheap lunch, I really like having the option of getting a cheese steak or a sausage sandwich or whathaveyou. And if I can pick up some really good fresh fruit to go along with it at the neighboring fruit stand, all the better.

I assume the absence of street vendors is explained by regulatory capture by low-end restaurant owners. If that's true, it's an awful shame. As is LA's ban on grilling hot dogs and bacon.

(BTW, did anyone else grow up having bacon with hot dogs? She didn't wrap them, but whenever my mom made us hot dogs, she would fry up some bacon first, and we would put a strip of crispy bacon alongside the hot dog in the bun. Yummy.)