It takes pluck to embark on a hot dog eating road trip across the United States when you don't have a drivers license. Fittingly Raw Dog by Jamie Loftus is a spirited book by a spirited writer. Loftus's travelogue is extremely funny, and her use of hot dogs as a literary conduit produces a fun book filled with personal experiences and opinions.
Why you should read Raw Dog
This book delivers on two sweet spots. I am always on the prowl for 1) engaging travelogues, and 2) humorous nonfiction, because I love a laugh with my learn. Raw Dog hits both of these with impressive consistency. Here's Loftus checking into an Albuquerque Motel:
[Receptionist]: "Sorry, this Wi-Fi has been so bad ever since the hotel got struck by lightning.” I’m the de facto pleasant conversation haver of the trip, and zone in on the quirky detail. “This place was struck by lightning? When?” Our hostess does not miss a beat, pummeling the keyboard with her life. “Today.” The corners of my boyfriend’s mouth turn down as the guy in the tracksuit starts to get impatient, muttering to himself a few feet away about where the fuck Jay is. “I’ve been struck by lightning four times, you know,” she continues, picking up a crusty keycard and running it through the proprietary scanner repeatedly. How are you doing? I still have no idea what’s happening in the moment. (Page 37)
This back and forth with the hostess and the tracksuited man looking for Jay continue for several pages of hilarity that more than makeup for the price of the book. Jamie Loftus has a knack for finding interesting characters, and it brings up a question. Are travel writers magnets for weirdos? Here's some more hotel content, this time in Arkansas:
That night we go to a hotel bar and I ask him [my boyfriend] to pretend to pick me up, which we get about 30 percent through before one of us, I don’t remember who, gets more interested in the fact that there are regulars here. While we’re eavesdropping on a pair of women gossiping about the teen beauty pageant contestants descending on the lobby (“they must know their angles because I’m just not seeing it”) and an aunt with a terminal illness (“it’s all right though,” she says before ordering another pickleback), our cocker spaniel is eating frog legs in the other room from the box my boyfriend thought was placed out of reach but was not. (Page 72)
This book has a lot of great hotel content! I realize I haven't mentioned hot dogs yet, and that's very much inline with Loftus's vision. This is a book about so much more than just hot dogs, but the hot dog material is great! Here's a couple dogs that sound really good:
Cleveland takes the edge here, focusing on gigantic kielbasa Polish boys (just call him po’boy, Jamie, you’re friends). That area is marked by institutions like Seti’s Polish Boys, Cleveland’s first food truck, which slings Polish sausages topped with slaw, fries, and barbecue sauce; or Banter, a bougier affair that offers their own Polish and a specialty sausage called a Cleveland, a kielbasa topped with pierogi, sauerkraut, and ballpark mustard. (Page 204)
Pierogi on a hot dog is so genius, I want to recreate it at home. And then there's Ben's Chili Bowl, close to where I grew up:
Ben’s is the home of the half-smoke, the DC and Virginia area’s signature hot dog prep that’s thought to have been innovated in 1930 by Raymond Briggs, owner of the DC Briggs and Co.’s meatpacking operation. Broken down, the traditional half-smoke is half-pork, half-beef, often split down the middle for grillability and dramatic effect, and generally smoked before being grilled. It’s known for being a little bigger and a little coarser than your average flaccid dog, more closely resembling a sausage but still considered Hot Dog Canon. They can be found at carts across the region, but only two brick-and-mortars are known for them—the Weenie Beenie in Arlington, Virginia, and Ben’s Chili Bowl in DC. (Page 91)
That smoked and grilled flavor sounds seriously good. I deeply regret never eating there while I was a kid, but driving across the city to Ben's would have been a hard sell to my parents (I don't blame them).
Most of the hot dog joints that Jamie Loftus visits are legacy establishments with interesting histories. For example, Ben's has served Barack Obama, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and:
“I’ve got this idea,” a BCB regular told Virginia Ali in 1963, “I just don’t know how to execute it.” The regular, as Ali tells it, was Martin Luther King Jr., and the plan was the March on Washington, prepared over a few thick, garlicky chili dogs. Ben’s Chili Bowl donated food to the organizing event, just as they had in 1960 to the Poor People’s Campaign. (Page 91)
History! Made and told with hot dogs! Let's go prehistoric for the penultimate excerpt in this post:
The “ancestral sausage” goes back twenty thousand years to the Paleolithic era. The Geico mascots of yore didn’t have the machinery necessary to bring hot dogs to the masses, but they had the general idea: meat cooked in skins over open fires or in pits filled with hot water that, with all due respect, couldn’t have been much dirtier than New York hot dogs cooking on the sidewalk as you read this. (Page 8)
Stuffing meat inside other meat seems like a fitting technique for caveman cuisine. It's embarrassing how frequently I think about the Geico cavemen. Why are those commercials so stuck in my head? Why are cavemen so stuck in my head?
23andMe marketing team, next time you're workshopping commercial ideas, pitch"ancestral sausage" as a cross-promotional opportunity. The Oscar Meyer Weinermobile (also covered in Raw Dog) can collect DNA samples while giving away free hot dogs in a bowling alley parking lot.
For a piece of Americana that virtually everyone has been forced to eat in celebration of European colonialism, there is stunningly little written about hot dogs in detail. There are a handful of books written with a swirl of research and love, and the assumption that you would only read a book about hot dogs because you love them. I will relieve you of that assumption. (Page 3)
Jamie Loftus bang-on in her opening paragraph. This is a hilarious travelogue that you should read regardless of your feelings on hot dogs. I don't even eat hot dogs, and I loved this book! It's a delicious journey visiting hot dog establishments across America, and spending time with such a talented writer.
Miscellaneous
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