Coney-catching 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 in medieval and Renaissance England in which devious people on the street would try to con or cheat vulnerable or gullible pedestrians. The term appears in "The Taming of the Shrew" and "The Merry Wives of Windsor" by William Shakespeare, and in the John Florio translation of Montaigne's essay, "Of the Cannibals." The term was first used in print by
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.