Food I love #3: Hot dog cart dogs

      So here's the question: if the ideal hot dog is charbroiled — and it is — then why would anybody ever want a hot dog that has been floating in hot water for a few hours?
      If you want your bun toasted on the grill — and you do — then why consume a hot dog slapped in a roll that has been steamed over the self-same hot dog water?
     Answer: it's a mystery. You just do. A hot dog cart dog is a gestalt — the boiled dog, the warm moist bun, the cheap mustard, eaten from a sheet of wax paper or, as above, crinkled paper nest, standing up in some strange city.
    That has to be a factor — just as a crowded ballpark ennobles a hot dog in a shiny foil-like wrap that you'd be hesitant to touch, never mind eat, in any other situation, so hot dog cart franks have a built-in romance and a splendor. 

     And rarity. Chicago has virtually no hot dog carts, another mystery, one I delved into 30 years ago, in a column that ran under the way-dull headline, "A New York Tradition we're healthier without." 

     NEW YORK CITY — Within an hour of arriving, my wife and I celebrated our being in Manhattan by sharing a potato knish bought from a cart at 46th Street and Broadway. It was great.
     So, too, were the hot dogs from a metal wagon in front of the Plaza. And the hot, sugared almonds from a nut stand on Fifth Avenue. And the big, salty pretzel purchased minutes later.
     Frankly, we would have gotten more food on the street — falafels, Mister Softees, cream sodas — but we also were eating three meals a day in restaurants. And more. We went directly from dinner at a funky restaurant in the West Village to the city's single outlet for Krispy Kreme doughnuts, a southern institution that has just invaded Gotham to great fanfare.
     I am not ashamed to say that eating a 45-cent original glazed Krispy Kreme doughnut, hot from the oven, was one of the outstanding experiences of my life.
     Well, maybe a little ashamed.
     Food on the street is just one of the many things that makes New York very different from Chicago. Writers are always wringing their hands over loss of diversity. They see the Starbucks and Gaps and Hard Rock Cafes popping up everywhere and conclude that all cities are now all the same and the entire world is merged into one vast Anyplace.
     But this is simply not true. Uniqueness still exists. New York is so different from Chicago that a glance at any 10 feet of storefront is usually enough to tell you which city you're in. Even the garbage cans are different in New York, and they're at curbside because the city doesn't have  many alleys. The little stores are different — New York has its bodegas, with ziggurats of fresh fruit out front. The street signs are different — New York has all those barking signs, "DON'T EVEN THINK OF PARKING HERE" and this simple, almost lovely one: "Don't Honk."
     In general, New York has a tougher, more armored look — more sliding metal grates, steel doors and security cameras.
     New York certainly sounds different. In Chicago, certain streets are filled with foreign languages — French tourists, Russian and Hispanic immigrants, whatever. But in New York half the time when I overhear foreigners, I can't even figure out what kind of language they are speaking. Again and again I puzzled over some mushy blast of whirling verbiage, all harsh consonants and spittle. What is that? Macedonian? Urdu? Pathan? No clue.
     Since New York drivers don't pull over to let firetrucks pass, the way we do here, they have a lot more of that piercing, pulsing death scream strobed out by emergency vehicles as a desperate last resort.
     Which is perhaps why people stay up all night in New York, packing the streets. In Chicago, we sleep, because we can.
     Lest someone misunderstand, I should stop right here and state, clearly, that I am not praising New York. I have this image of walking by a softball game and hearing somebody yell, "That's him! The guy who likes New York! Get him!" then being chased by 20 big guys waving aluminum bats.
      For the record: Nothing about New York is better than Chicago.
     Different, yes. Particularly those street food vendors. I kept wondering about them. Why so many in New York — four at a street corner, in places — and absolutely none in Chicago?
I took a deep breath and plunged into the bureaucracy.
     "There is no such thing as a hot dog cart with a wash-up sink," explained Tim Hadac, spokesman for the Chicago Department of Public Health. "Where does the food handler wash his or her hands?"
     Another city official speculated that a strong Chicago restaurant association had something to do with our lack of food carts. He, of course, didn't want to be named.
      I then wondered, if food vendors are so pestilential here, how do they pass muster in New York?
     Taking two deep breaths, I plunged into New York's Health Department. Spokesman Fred Winters said that New York vendor carts have sinks and running water and precautions are taken.
     "Our vendors use rubber gloves or wax paper," he said.
     Winters couldn't let that bit of naivete float in the air too long, however. He quickly added, "They don't always do it."
     The vendor who sold me a hot dog in New York certainly didn't. I had flinched when he lifted a bun out of the package with his bare hand and used his thumb to split it open. Where had that thumb been? And I flinched again as Chicago's Hadac waxed poetic on the perils of food carts.
     "The person is handling money and currency, which is soiled," he continued. "The person may be shaking hands with someone. And then there is the issue of where does that person go to the bathroom?"
     So why, in his opinion, do they permit them in New York?
     "Maybe this is a quaint tradition," he said. "Maybe if New Yorkers want their hot dogs and sauerkraut they're not going to let anything get in their way."
     "Not going to let anything get in their way" – that's the motto on the city seal of New York, isn't it?
               — Originally published in the Sun-Times Oct. 13, 1996