8th Annual Hot Dog Tour - RI

 

Ate or Eight?  Either way it’s great!  June 23, 2023, was the 8^th year of our annual (minus one COVID year) of the A to Z Hot Dog Tour.  The usual participants were Alan, Terry, Tom and Beth.  AKA – All In Alan, Terry Two Footer (she ate a 2 ft. long hotdog without cutting it) Tommy Jaws (no explanation needed) and Beth or Battling Betty.  She battles to keep up with the other three dog hounds!

Wally's Weiner's

Wearing our gray T-shirts with black lettering of A to Z Original Hot Dog Tour, (courtesy of the A team), we began the tour of dog eateries in Rhode Island.  Following the colorful itinerary provided by Alan complete with an emergency hot dog kit (gummy hotdogs) in case we didn’t find any to our liking (yea like that’s going to happen!), we proceeded to our first stop in Newport, RI.  A former elite dining French Restaurant, then a French Fry Palace, now known as Wally’s Weiners at 464 Thames St.,  Do you think there are hot dog eateries on the London Thames?  Hmm, could this be a possible trip to find out?

With eleven different hot dogs to choose from Tom, Beth and Alan selected the Wally which is a Saugy brand hot dog (regular length) in a Martin Potato Rolls topped with bacon, grilled peppers and onions and the Wally sauce.  The Wally sauce is a combination of Chipotle and Aioli sauce. Alan also ordered the Spicy Kraut topped with cherry pepper kraut and Dijon mustard.  For Tom’s second choice, he opted for the Rhody topped with meat sauce, yellow mustard, diced onion, and celery salt.  Battling Beth (battling the battle of the bulge) thought the Veggie dog would be a proper choice.  (Yea, like eating one Veggie dog was going to make a difference on this tour!)  It was a Vegan wiener topped with grilled onions and peppers, ketchup and mustard.  It was very good.  Terry, our organist, went with the Jammin’ dog topped in bacon onion jam and burger sauce.  I forgot to get the details on the burger sauce, sorry.  Terry seemed to be in a bacon mood and opted for the BBQ Bacon Cheddar.  She’s bacon me crazy!   LOL.  It was loaded with real bacon bits (no imitation ingredients here), cheddar cheese sauce, Carolina gold BBQ sauce.  Wally’s Weiners offers a colorful décor of off white wall paper with black and white sketches of different dog breeds wearing hats or bowties.  Tables seat 2-4 and there’s a small bar serving Espresso Martinis.  The ceiling is tin panels as well as part of the walls.  They have an upstairs dining facility where those over 21 can mingle at night.  Like most places, there were flat screen TV’s for our watching pleasure.  But enjoying our wieners and critiquing each one left no time to watch TV.   Our waitress, Emma, from Greenville, NY was very pleasant and accommodating to answer all our questions.  She also suggested a hotdog restaurant in Greenville which could be a future tour site?  We all enjoyed the potato rolls which were grilled and consumed our fist 8 hotdogs without any hesitation.

 

Eight in the bank!  Record is    dogs/wieners.  Is there a difference between a weiner and hotdog?  Yes,  We were informed at our last stop (we’ll get to that soon), wieners are made with beef, soy and pork.  A hotdog is made with beef, pork and veal.  I haven’t verified that with any resources, so that’s your homework!

Next stop Cranston, RI at Olneyville New York System on 1012 Reservoir Avenue.  Oh by the way, you can visit the websites of these places for a more detailed look at their menu.  Olneyville has been in operation since 1946.  They get their wieners in 10’ lengths and cut to fit their bun.  They use the Little Rhody out of Johnston, RI.  They serve a New York style weiner with the standard meat sauce, mustard, onion and celery salt.  The wieners have an orange coloring to them.  They are grilled and the bun is left “natural”.  Beth had her weiner w/o onions.  She only likes them fried, in rings or carmalized.  Everyone else had their wieners complete with all ingredients.  We ate 10 dogs here working our way through 18.  We were also given complimentary tastings of “ coffee milk”.  It’s a R.I. thing!  It is m

ilk with a coffee syrup added to it and it’s very very good.  You can buy it at most stores in RI.  Terry got one for the road!  The staff that day showed us how it was and in some places still customary to line up bunned wieners up your outstretched arm and add the toppings while balancing them.  The record for one of the workers was 50, topped on on top of the other.  He demonstrated an arm’s length for us.  Once people see our shirts, they begin to ask questions and we always have great conversations with the workers/owners who are happy to share their passion for dogs/wieners. 

New York Lunch

Heading back toward MA, we visited our last stop of the tour at New York Lunch on Main St, Woonsocket.  This establishment has been in this location since 1907.  The interior was very nostalgic with pictures, slogans, food prices from 1957, (year of two of us, not saying who).  Although, they don’t work, they still have the small table juke boxes which use to cost 5 cents to play a tune!  They use a Grote ‘n Wegiel weiner topped with meat sauce (a bit spicier and tastier than the
Olneyville weiner.  Tom and Beth split the special of 3 dogs with small fries and drink (root beer).  Between the four of us, another 6 down the hatch!   The décor really makes the place with red and black squared tiles, silver tin ceilings, booths and stools.  So much Americana nostalgia, you could spend a hour taking it all in.  Again, staff very friendly and accommodating.

Keeping not only our stomachs satisfied but our sweet tooth (Terry has the largest appetite in this category), we stopped at Kilwin’s Chocolate/Ice Cream and Cupcake Charlies in Newport.  How decadent!    Very impressed that the four cupcakes Terry and Alan boxed to go, actually made it home!!  Such restraint!

Well, with a total of 24 hotdogs consumed, we returned home with the record still in reach.  Beth and Tom hosted and served a great salad with 4 sliced Wardynski dogs (Buffalo NY) in it and a choose of a Lincoln Log featured on the series “The Sopranos”.  It is a dog either rolled in a piece of white bread or in a bun slathered with cream cheese.  If you add onions, jalapenos, kraut and siracha, it becomes a Seattle dog.  Including the dogs in the salad, we put down 9 more dogs for a total of 33 dogs.  Did we break the record?  Have to wait until I get my hotdog tour binder back to find out! 

Keeping with the theme of hotdogs, we played the card game, Turn for the Wurst, mentioned on Jeopardy one night.  You try to satisfy different hot dog recipe cards by accumulating the necessary condiments.  Very fun!

Dessert consisted of a Twinkie with the middle carved out in which one half of a Twix bar was placed into it to be the dog.  Colored vanilla frosting yellow for mustard and red for ketchup was piped on top with chopped up green apple licorice for the relish.  It was a hit!  There you have it folks, year 8.  Plans for next year?  You’ll have to wait until June 2024.!