Party lunch at the Cincinnati airport

A bit over a week ago, I went with a colleague on a one-day trip to and from Cincinnati.  On the way back, we stopped at a chili place in the airport because, hey, chili mac.

Indeed, it was tasty, though I may have overdone it with the hot sauce.

Click an image to see a larger version.

The chili was lurking under the spaghetti in the classic style.

While in line for this special treat, we couldn't help but notice this ad from the same fast food stand.

What I like to imagine is what it would take for me to be at the airport, walking by this stand, and suddenly need a giant box of 10 "Coneys" (which proved to be hot dogs smothered in cheese and chili).  Maybe a call from home that we've been invaded by a gang of young men?  Maybe just the worst stress day in history and a sudden and overwhelming urge to eat myself into sickness?

Whatever the cause, I have to admit that I would love to come strolling into, say, PT carrying a giant box of 10 Coneys and saying, sorry, they're all for me.

That would not be a productive day. 

National Hot Dog Day extends to the beach

Of course it does!  Why would it not?  In keeping with this day of tube steak celebration, my lunch from my favorite local sandwich shop was their "Two Dogs Done Right."

Click an image to see a larger version.  

The dish was definitely messy, but it was also quite tasty.

The beach trip is winding to a close, and so, too, are the BobCakes.  The main BobCake is still standing, but it is now far the worse for wear.

The second CaBobCake is going down more gracefully, but it is nonetheless going down.

Beach life is food life.

Apes and dogs

Kyle and I headed today to the only cinema in the area to catch War for the Planet of the Apes, the latest (and pretty good) installment in this franchise.  The theater is a hot mess, but it's the only one in easy driving distance, so we visit it at least a couple of times each beach vacation.

On the way, we stopped for lunch at a drive-through hot dog stand, where we each enjoyed a bottle of water and two of these creations.

Click the image to see a larger version.

Meet the pimento cheese bacon hot dog, truly a feast of rare beauty.

Beach life is animal life.

Today's BobCake update shows that we are not making very good progress against the mighty cakes of Bob.  The BobCake is resisting us,

while the second and final CaBobCake slowly succumbs to our attacks.

Beach life is dessert life.

Hot dog taste tests

Lynn pointed me to this article, in which The New York Times conducted a blind, two-stage, hot-dog taste test. Their winners were the Wellshire Farms Premium All-Natural Uncured Beef Franks and the Hebrew National Kosher Beef Franks. I've eaten the Hebrew National dogs many times, but the Wellshire Farms tube steaks were new to me; I will obviously have to try them!

At a party a long time ago, I did a similar but less controlled blind hot dog taste test with a different variety of dogs, many of them high-end versions from various mail-order services. My group had a clear favorite: the Nathan's hot dogs, which finished in the middle group of the Times' test batch.

Clearly, it's time for me to repeat that test with a new selection of noble tube steaks that includes those from Wellshire Farms!

Hitting the streets

If the weather forecasts are reliable, today is going to be the nicest day of my stay in Amsterdam, so I decided to spend the day walking the streets and getting a sense of the city.  I wandered all over the place, including through the famous "Nine streets" boutique shopping area.

This city loves its hot dogs.  Stands selling them are everywhere.  On the canal bridge nearest the hotel, two vendors sit opposite one another in fierce competition.

Click on any image to see a larger version.

Fries are also big here.  People walk the street eating them from cones.  Toppings range from ketchup to mustard to curry to combinations better left unwritten.  This chain seemed particularly popular; I encountered three of them during my walk.

Bicycles are everywhere, as are cars.  Traffic is intense, with bicycles, cars, trams, buses, scooters, and pedestrians all vying for space and the right to move forward.  Here some parked bikes give you a sense of just how many are in use.

The crown on the building in the above shot is due to Tuesday being Queen's Day, a national holiday celebrating the Queen--and a particularly important one this year, because the next day the Queen will step down in favor of her son, who will become the King. 

The combination of so many hot dog stands, fry vendors all over the place, and intense traffic made me realize that I arrived at this city unprepared.  What I really needed is my motorized Hot Dog Throne of Doom.  If I had that sucker, I could cruise the streets in hot-dog-armored splendor, at speed, while stuffing my yap full of cheese-covered fries.  I could even add a fry cone holder to the hot dog.

If only I'd thought of that earlier.  Ah, well.

Back in the real world, this statue, the National Monument, sits in Dam Square as a tribute to those who died in World War II and subsequent armed conflicts. 

Across the square from it sits the Royal Palace, a lovely building. 

On another side of the square is the Nieuwe Kerk (New Church), which like the palace was getting decked out for the upcoming holiday.

Parking on the canal is common here, so having a small car certainly makes sense.  Some cars, though, are just too damn small.  Cases in point:

Graffiti doesn't run rampant here, but some appears in interesting places.  I liked this one.

Hey, Sarah and Ben, a camera store focused heavily on lomography.

And, Ben, a shop that sold primarily bow-ties.

Note the cat sleeping in the window.  Ya gotta love shop cats. 

I loved the mellow attitude the owner put above this door. 

Or maybe it was an existentially correct attitude, such as Dave's.  No way to know for sure, though in a city with marijuana bars--blasts of smoke hit you as you walk down the street, I'm betting on mellow.

The day was indeed perfect for wandering, the sky lovely and clear, the temperature in the high 60s.

Glorious.  

Did I mention hot dogs?  I had no clue you could buy them 33 to the can.

An automat!

This theater was lovely. 

Dinner was at an Indian restaurant that proved to be a very good choice.  The food was quite tasty, and I encountered something delicious I've never seen before:  cheese naan.  The server said it wasn't really Indian food but that "you can get it everywhere."

Well, I can't, and now I want to know why.  Cheese naan is awesome!

Tomorrow, forecasts call for rain, and I have no clue yet what I will do.  That's just the way I like it. 

Yes, we ate that--and other pictures

Lunch today took us to a local place that had been a favorite--"had been" because after experiencing its reduced menu, many of us won't be back.

Kyle and I, though, ordered the most unusual dish on that menu:  The Big Dog. 

As always, click on any photo to see a bigger version.

What makes The Big Dog so special is the sheer volume of its unhealthy ingredients. The recipe goes something like this:

Take a quarter-pound hot dog.
Wrap it in bacon.
Fry it.
Put it in an extra-large "gourmet" bun.
Cover it with French fries.
Cover all of that with chili.
Cover all of that with cheese sauce.

Oh, yeah, we're talking health food.

For Kyle, though, that wasn't enough. He added fried plantains.

Next up for us was a stop at a new shop that makes its own ice cream. After all, when The Big Dog is threatening to poke pieces of bacon straight out of your gut, clearly the only rational choice is to tamp it all down with some delicious, homemade, creamy goodness.

At that shop, we saw this lovely rocker.

I would absolutely put that on my deck.

We then wandered across the road and down a bit to a den of true craziness, a place that wasn't open but that had intrigued us all over the years. I won't reveal its true identity, but here are a few happy snaps to give you a flavor of the place.

Note the spider web in the middle of the grill.

The fake body in this car is a nice touch.

I particularly like the sign on the ground here.

The missing apostrophe is just a bonus.

A one-question quiz

When you see this description on the menu

Double Dog Wrap
Two all beef hot dogs, chili, slaw, and
cheddar grilled in a flour tortilla

do you

(A) declare it the most disgusting dinner option you've seen in a long while
(B) wonder aloud about whether they grill the hot dogs first, the whole thing, or both
(C) consider how many days of your life you'd be sacrificing if you ate it
(D) order it with great glee
(E) all of the above

My answer: (E), of course!

Which, as you might expect, is why I found myself staring at this dish on Saturday night and wondering what I had gotten myself into. Though the photo is a bit dark (I forgot BlogCam and had to rely on my iPhone), I think it will give you at least a hint of the weirdness that was the Double Dog Wrap. The hot dogs themselves were huge and so firm they were more like kielbasa than classic tube steaks. The tortilla was indeed grilled. The vast mess on the inside combined all the key ingredients in a kind of chunky brown semi-liquid substance that you don't want to think about or stare at for long.

The overall flavor combo, though, was pretty good. It wasn't great, but it was a fun, filling, and tasty meal.

In case you're wondering, you can find this mess at The Diner on Glenwood South in Raleigh. The food there was generally okay but no better, so I can recommend the place only if you're up after two a.m. and really need greasy food--or if you just have to try this strange concoction.

As I did.

And the hot dog winner is...

Tonight, we had my belated birthday party, the food centerpiece of which was a hot dog tasting. I assembled four competitors:

- Allen Brothers' steak dogs
- Lobel's
- Nathan's
- Sabretts

Though I did no scientific measurements, my random polling of those with opinions yielded the following result: no consensus. Allen Brothers', Lobel's, and Nathan's all received some first-place votes, and Sabretts garnered the most second-place nods.

The contest was fun, and all the dogs were tasty. The sides were great, and the desserts were wonderful.

I'm very lucky to have friends.

What is the world's best hot dog?

I wonder about this question. I love a good hot dog. Heck, I'll even eat a bad one if there's something interesting about it, say a particularly vile shade of red or strange wrinkles adorning its flanks.

I intend to try to come closer to the answer next Saturday night, at a belated birthday party that will feature four or so of the top contenders. If you have a nominee, let me know. I'll post the consensus, as well as my own opinion, after the party.

Entries may be short for a while, unless the mood to expound hits me or I'm really stalling, because I'm cooking on Overthrowing Heaven and really digging it, I'm behind on reviewing the galleys for Slanted Jack, I have an April 14 deadline for a secret project (no, really, I can't talk about it), the two anthologies await my attention, I owe Dave and Toni each some work, and, oh yeah, I have a sixty- or seventy-hour-a-week full-time job as a CEO--one who has no assistant and who is still sick. I'm not whining, but I am busy--which is much better, I suppose, than not having all these opportunities.

Time to hunker down.

Wanting but not wanting

Certain items fall into an odd category: I want them, but I don't really want them. To be precise, I lust after them, but if I had them they would largely gather dust, though from time to time I would peer at them with great pride and wonder.

Consider, for example, the three lovely classes of hot dog devices on the home page of a site I can't help but love, Hot Dog World. Do I need a hot dog steamer, broiler, or roller grill? Of course not. Would I use one if I had one? Probably not more than once or twice.

But, you have to admit they're deeply cool.

Well, okay, maybe you don't, but I do.

Thinking of these lovely bits of machinery naturally causes me to reflect on the noble tube steak. I've long sought to find the best hot dog in the world: not the best way to prepare a hot dog, but rather the actual piece of meat (well, more or less meat) itself. Nathan's can make a claim at the title, though right now I'd award it to the tasty offerings from Allen Brothers.

If you know of a better hot dog, please clue me in.

National Chili Dog Day--and, oh yeah, my reading

According to our server at the Raleigh Hard Times Cafe at dinner after tonight's reading at Quail Ridge Books & Music (how's that for plugging two businesses before I've even hit the meat of the sentence), today was National Chili Dog Day. To a hot dog fan such as myself, this was excellent news indeed. The day improved further when the server explained that with every order of any size each person got a free chili dog. Hot jets! I enjoyed mine and the chili mac that was my main course. Yummy.

The earlier part of the evening marked my solo reading debut and was a great deal of fun for me. I thank the fine folks at QRB for hosting me (and for putting this big sign about me in their window). I hope I helped them sell copies of my book.





I also hope the audience had a good time. Sarah took blogcam in hand and captured a few happy snaps from the event. This first one shows the audience massing (but not yet at full strength; we ended up filling all the chairs). The crowd was much larger than I had dared hope. True, most of the folks were my friends, but I counted at least seven folks I didn't already know.


In this next photo, my friend, John Kessel, a fine SF writer and a Professor of English at North Carolina State University, is introducing me. He was most kind.








In this last photo--if you want more, I have them, but I thought I'd spare you in this post--I am standing and yakking. As you can almost certainly tell if you read this blog regularly, I tend to be extremely earnest, perhaps overly so; I was no different tonight. Despite that, everyone was very nice to me, and after the reading Scott leapt up and had me sign his copy of One Jump Ahead--while he shilled for it. Nice job, Scott!

I want to thank most of all my family and extended family and friends for coming out and supporting me. I'm very lucky.