Hot-dog history: It all started in Frankfurt

Susan Semenak, Postmedia News 

Hot-dog history: It all started in Frankfurt

Will Hutchins chows down on a hotdog with homemade corn relish and bacon from Jonathan Cheung’s food truck Chaud Dogs which features gourmet hot dogs, currently located at the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal, on Tuesday, July 23, 2013.

Dave Sidaway / The Gazette


MONTREAL - Here are a few highs and lows in hot-dog history:

1200s: Pork sausages are served at imperial coronations and other public events in Frankfurt, Germany. They become known as frankfurters. In Vienna, Austria, similar sausages, called wieners, are being made of beef and pork.

Early 1800s: German immigrants to the United States bring their sausage recipes with them when they arrive.

1860s: They begin selling their grilled sausages in warm buns from roving food carts in New York, Chicago and St. Louis.

1867: At Coney Island in New York, butcher Charles Feltman begins selling his sausages in warm buns, which makes them easier to eat. He pushes his wagon around to beachgoers, charging 10 cents a piece and makes a fortune doing so.

1890s: The term “hot dog” comes into common usage. It is at first derogatory, a reference to the reports that early 20th-century German sausage factories used dog meat in their mix.

1893: Chris vonder Ahe, owner of the St. Louis Browns, brings sausage sandwiches to his ballpark. The first ballpark franks are a smash hit among spectators.

1904: Bavarian-born concession stand owner Anton Feuchtwange gives his customers at the St. Louis, Mo., World’s Fair gloves to hold their warm sausages. But they rarely return them, so he asks a local baker to make him rolls the same size as his sausages, with a slit down the middle to make them easier to prepare. The hot dog bun is born.

1912: Alphonse Lafleur opens his neighbourhood butcher shop in Quebec City, where his smoked sausages become best-sellers. Soon the family is producing their hot dogs on a large scale and packaging and distributing them to restaurants and supermarkets across the province.

1916: Nathan Handwerker, a former employee of Feltman’s, starts his own tiny hot dog stand at Coney Island. Cary Grant, Al Capone and Jimmy Durante are regular customers and Nathan’s becomes almost instantly famous. (Nathan’s now sells more than 400 million hot dogs a year from its 40,000 outlets.)

1921: Montreal’s signature all-dressed steamé with coleslaw and chopped onion makes its debut when The Montreal Pool Room, the city’s most iconic greasy spoon, opens on The Main.

1961: The first Lafleur Restaurant opens its doors on Lafleur Blvd. in LaSalle and becomes famous for its steamies and Michigans, a riff on the chili-topped dogs popular in Michigan.

1990s: Lafleur Restaurants introduce veggie dogs.

2012: In London, England, the restaurant Bubbledogs gives its gourmet hot dogs panache, pairing them with champagne.

2013: The Chaud Dogs food truck takes its gourmet hot dogs to the streets of Montreal.

