Monday, August 2, 2021

S. Rosen’s bun star of Chicago style hot dog



     If the Chicago-style hot dog were a hit TV show, the title character would, of course, be the star: a Vienna hot dog, made in Chicago.
     Beloved supporting characters would be yellow mustard, Plochman’s please, the brand mixed — ingredients in mustard aren’t cooked, just blended — in nearby Manteno. A pickle spear and neon relish plus, for that healthful touch, tomato wedges and onion bits. Followed, last and least, by the twin oddities of sport pepper and celery salt.
     If you actually like those last two, well, God bless you. I’d rather dress my hot dog with the vendor’s thumb, pickled and dusted in cooties.
     We could talk about those elements all day, and people do. Yet somehow, the endless Chicago-style hot dog conversation never gets to the foundation, the one unsung actor who literally holds the whole show together: the S. Rosen’s poppyseed bun.
     Let’s fix that.
     “We are the bun purveyor in the city of Chicago for well over 95% of all the hot dog stands,” said Mark Marcucci, president of Alpha Baking Co., which owns S. Rosen’s.
     He’s sitting on the second floor of the Lyndale Avenue facility, immediately south of Hermosa Park and three-quarters as big. The building used to house Mary Ann bakery —the logo is still on the floor in the entry — and though there is no sign whatsoever on the street, this is a spot in fast food history.

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11 comments:

  1. I'm baffled by the part that seeded buns outsell unseeded ones at retail.
    Almost all the hot dog buns I see at the store are unseeded & it's hard to find the ones with poppy seeds.

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    1. Maybe they sell so quickly they’re often sold out?

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  2. Hold the pickle and peppers. Extra onions, please.

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  3. I've always associated Rosen's with rye bread, squat, almost round loaves, tastier and chewier with caraway seeds, and a delightful sandwich material with almost anything, though dill/kosher pickles seem almost a requirement.

    Fabulous description of something almost all of us take for granted.

    john

    john

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  4. My Mom had dementia of the kind with no short term memory, but recalled past events like they occurred yesterday. She had many tales to tell of the past. My Grandfather worked for Rosen's Bakery from 1920 to 1942. In the summer, of course no air conditioning, my Mom would buy fresh sandwiches for her dad and his friends at break time. When she was high school age, Sam Rosen would stare at her breasts when talking to her. My Grandfather stole a loaf of bread for his sister-in-law who was recently widowed with two children. Fortunately there was no Inspector Javert in hot pursuit, they just fired him. He got a job with Burny Brother's Bakery until he retired.

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  5. Nicely done. Good to know how the staff of life is manufactured in quantity. For some reason it brings to mind a favorite quote from Stefan Weinberg: " We who are not zealots can rejoice that when bread and wine are no longer sacraments they will still be bread and wine." And a mildly anti-Semitic (I suppose) joke about Sam Rosen trying to bribe the Pope into making a change in the liturgy -- from 'give us today our daily bread' to 'give us today our Rosen's rye.'

    Tom

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    1. I never heard that joke before. Maybe you had to be a Catholic. I'm not offended. But when I worked at the Sun-Times in the mid-Seventies, we had a cartoon on the wall of the wire room, where all the teletype and fax lines were located. It was a pen-and-ink sketch of a guy reading the front page, with Chicago's skyline in the background. The tagline was "Sun-Times editor, praying for a flash: GIVE US THIS DAY OUR 'DALEY DEAD'" (A "flash" was an extremely urgent breaking news story, like 9/11, or JFK being shot). All the wire room folks thought that pun was a laugh riot.

      Until that cold afternoon, a few days before Christmas of '76, when it wasn't so funny anymore.

      But it stayed on the wall long after the funeral of "Hizzoner, Da Mare." Newspaper staffers had a rather sick sense of humor, back in the day, since they so often dealt with humankind at its worst. That hasn't changed, so I'm guessing many of them still do.

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  6. Moved away from Chicago years ago but still visited from time-to-time and the first thing I did when driving to Chicago was getting a Chicago Dog will all the fixins.

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  7. My taste buds revolt at raw onions, so I never have the standard Chicago Dog. At a 19th Hole a while back, the only food was hot dogs with limited condiments; mustard, ketchup, onion and hot giardeneria. With ketchup and onions unacceptable, I enjoyed my dog with the with the remainders. I haven't had a dog without the hot giardeneria since, with the exception of Superdawg. But I appreciate the importance of the bun. On mess duty(KP for you soldiers) aboard an aircraft carrier, I baked bread. 400 loaves a day and 1-2000 hot dog or hamburger rolls, all from a navy recipe, quick rising "Bayonne Bread". The sailors ate 'em up, but they were a sad substitute for a Rosen's.

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  8. Go figure: So i get a package today in California from my daughter in Chicagoland. It’s from Portillo’s, a make your own hot dog gift pack encased in an ice chest, complete with hot dogs, relish, peppers, special sauce, onion and mustard, with the star: S. Rosen’s buns. And I never mentioned the column to her. Comes with d-i-y instructions.

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