Everyone’s favorite tubed mystery meat is now a mainstay at cocktail bars around the world. As usual, for better or worse, much of this trend has played out on TikTok, in the form of drinks that taste like hot dogs, hot dog water Dirty Martinis, and Martini and hot dog pairings. But while glizzies — and pieces explaining what the hell a “glizzy” is — are trending at the moment, the weenie and the ‘tini have far deeper ties than we may realize.
Hot dogs are summer. They’re long holiday weekends and backyard barbecues. School is out of session and it’s not dark until 10 p.m. and life is good. They represent one of the strongest and most essential pieces of nostalgia we have in our lives. And while our collective association of a hot dog and a cold beer at a sunny summer baseball game is particular to the U.S., the allure of the tubed meat in its myriad mystery forms spans much of the globe.
Why wouldn’t we want to recapture a small sliver of that in one of the few adult places — the watering hole — where we’re allowed to let our guards down and forget about emails and have a good time?
Hot Dogs Are So Hot Right Now
At LilliStar in Williamsburg, the “Hot Doggin’ It” is served in a drink pouch that calls to mind the foil wrapper of a street cart hot dog. The drink is garnished with a cocktail wiener gummy, and uses ingredients such as tomato water and mustard seed to evoke a hot dog.
“We really wanted to capture the essence of summer vibes with the cocktail,” says Christine Wiseman, global beverage director of Bar Lab‘s concepts, including LilliStar. The Hot Doggin’ It was inspired by our desire to create something new and embody the spirit of grilling and chilling with friends on a rooftop.”
Wiseman infuses agave with mustard seeds, adds in mezcal to emulate the smokiness from a grill, and a few drops of vinegar to provide acidity, and says that Lustau Vermut provides a touch of saltiness and umami. “It’s a playful spin on the classic, and it doesn’t actually taste like a hot dog,” she says. “It’s well balanced and delicious.”
Credit: Tokyo Confidential
At Tokyo Confidential, founder Holly Graham leans in even more with the “Glizztini,” a drink including gin, shochu, mezcal, and Lillet Blanc, along with tomato pickle, MSG, and onion brine. Drizzled red and yellow cacao butter squirted from squeeze bottles across the glassware give the appearance of streaks of ketchup and mustard. “I am really proud of this drink and initially worried it may be taken as gimmicky — and it is a little, that’s fine, we love silly shit — but it’s a genuinely tasty and well-crafted drink,” she says, crediting head bartender Waka Murata for coming up with the concoction.
All the better that it aligned with the bar’s new “Second Base” menu. “Each of the drinks is a cheeky nod to baseball terminology or traditions, bringing them to life in liquid form utilizing lesser-known Japanese ingredients and spirits, hence the Glizztini, glizzy being slang for hot dog and a hot dog being a quintessential baseball snack,” Graham says. The team is currently rocking customized baseball jerseys, while the menu itself takes the form of a wallet holder that can be used to collect baseball cards, with each drink having its own card.
At Denver’s Yacht Club, hot dogs aren’t going into the drinks, but rather being served beside them, with an entire franks menu of variations. Options range from the “Norm,” or a plain frank, to the “Caviar Dog,” with caviar, crème fraiche, and pickled shallot. “While we take what we do seriously, we do not take ourselves too seriously,” says co-owner Mary Allison Wright, explaining that they have even established lore behind the bar’s fictional Hollywood Franks franchise.
Credit: @shawnxcampbell / @yachtclubbar
“We’re devotees to hot dogs because they’re the people’s food,” Wright says. “They break economic barriers, almost everyone loves them, and they’re a common unifying factor.” The bar also serves vegan and gluten-free variations to keep those inclusive vibes intact.
Yacht Club also showcases hot dog and drink pairings on its menu, such as the “Old Number 7-11,” a Norm with a Jack & Coke for nine bucks, or one of their specialty dogs served with a frozen Banana Daiquiri. “The Tropic Thunder includes a Lorraine Dog, topped with our cheese ball spread, celery remoulade, pickled peppers, and pecans, and a frozen Banana Daiquiri for $20,” Wright says. For more of a splurge, guests can order the “Royale with Cheese,” or two “Caviar Dogs” alongside a bottle of Marie Courtin Resonance Champagne for $140. “Hot dogs and non-beer alcoholic pairings are just salt, fat, acid, and sugar working together in perfect harmony.”
Hot Dogs, High Low & Hijinks
Of course, cocktails and hot dogs have been seen side-by-side at least as far back as 2007, when New York’s PDT opened in the back room of drunk food emporium Crif Dogs. And dive bars favored by the cocktail cognoscenti have long had a love affair with the hot dog as well, such as Washington, D.C.’s venerable Ivy and Coney.
Now, though, hot dogs are taking their star turn on the menus of more elevated establishments as well. The Portrait Bar at the Fifth Avenue Hotel serves a “Hot Dog Au Poivre” amid its extravagant bar food menu from chef Andrew Carmellini, while Mischa was making waves last year for its $29 hot dog, though sadly not enough of them to keep the joint open. At Trick Dog in San Francisco, its current “Salty Dog” menu features the “QD Mission Dog,” including a strip of bacon and fire-roasted jalapeño spread, as well as a vegetarian version, to fortify bar goers sampling from its lineup of tropical cocktails.
There are cocktail world memes on the subject, and at least one spirits writer devoting much of his time to an in-depth, all-things-hot-dog exploration. Elsewhere, hot dogs have been viewed as cool enough for the cool kids for at least the past decade, since the late Anthony Bourdain said, “All my happiest moments seem to revolve around meat in tube form,” a quote unleashed upon the world on an episode of “Parts Unknown” in 2013.
With July 4th in the rearview, I know we’re all counting down the days until the live Netflix event of the year, “Kobayashi vs. Chestnut: Unfinished Beef,” on Sept. 2. While the hot dog itself is nostalgia writ large, for anyone in my tier of the millennial age bracket, this is an almost unmissable spectacle harkening back to when Takeru Kobayashi first took a triumphant turn at the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest in 2001, setting the world of competitive eating aflame, before being unseated by Joey Chestnut in 2007.
Credit: @theportaitbarnyc on Instagram
All of this before delving into the debate over whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich — spoiler alert, it most certainly is, and if you don’t agree with me, I can die happy knowing that Padma Lakshmi does (as if I needed another reason to love the woman). Bourdain, aforementioned patron saint of tubed meats, disagreed, which, alas, is why they say you shouldn’t meet your heroes or ask them every single hot dog-related question you can conjure.
Expect the Hot Dog Trend to Have Legs
Hot dogs are popular for a reason. The nostalgia, the cost-effectiveness, and the fact that they just taste good, as long as you don’t burden yourself by wondering what the hell it even is. And in the bar world, they’re not going anywhere.
Graham credits their value as a great bar snack, but also notes that they’re “getting more meme exposure as of late.” As for her guests who’ve sampled the Glizztini, “they love it.”
At Yacht Club, Wright says that the pandemic led many of us to seek out comfort from what we were consuming and where we were doing so. “Hot dogs were that warm blanket to make us feel safe,” she says. “Also, social media has been helpful in their rise thanks to all the lovely hot dog memes that exist in the universe.”
She’s just giving the people what they want. “Hot dogs are having a moment, which is no big secret,” Wright says. “We’ve just opened up another shrine for people to worship at.”
And just like at a summer grill out, hot dogs never come one at a time, they come in bunches and hordes — even though hot dog math is admittedly hard, with most packs coming in sixes yet most buns coming in eights. “The Hot Doggin’ It is definitely one of our best sellers, and once someone watches another person get the drink, they end up ordering one for themselves,” Wiseman says.
The hot dog might never quite reach peak hot drink of summer status, but there’s no denying the glizzy’s place in the booze world zeitgeist.
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