Coney-catching Robert Greene in a series of 1592 pamphlets, the titles of which included "The Defence of Conny-catching," in which he argued there were worse crimes to be found among "reputable" people, and "A Disputation betweene a Hee Conny-catcher and a Shee Conny-catcher." Kirby Farrell wrote a book called "Cony-catching" in 1971. Virginia Woolf mentions "cony catchers" in her book "Orlando". Coney-catching Coney-catching is Elizabethan slang for theft through trickery. It comes from the word "coney" (sometimes spelled "conny"), meaning a rabbit raised for the table and thus tame. A coney-catcher was a thief or con man. It was a practice
Coney Island hot dog immigrants Tom and John Kardjieff, founders of Empress Chili, in 1922. The coney topping is also used as a topping for spaghetti, a dish called a "two-way" or chili spaghetti. there were over 250 "chili parlors" in Cincinnati serving coneys. The two largest chains today are Skyline Chili and Gold Star Chili. Arguably the most famous is Camp Washington Chili, which is called out by Jane and Michael Stern as their top pick in Cincinnati. Tony Packo's Cafe in Toledo, OH serves their own style of coney dog, the "Hungarian dog." This was made famous on the television show MASH.