I'd been wanting to go to Hot Doug's since I got here, but somehow had never gotten around to it. Lots of things suddenly seem pressing when you have piles of work staring you in the face, though, and so at about 3:00 on Saturday, when Rosy and I were sick of staring at our computers, we decided we couldn't go another day not having eaten there.

For those of you who don't know, Hot Doug's is sort of the ultimate in Chicago hole-in-the-wall places...a tiny place in a rando building on California that serves fancified hot dogs. It's particularly famous for having a foie gras hot dog, which was on the Chicago episode of No Reservations and which also got Doug a nice fine (or so I hear) for continuing to serve it when the city outlawed foie gras a while back.

Anyway. I don't really eat meat but my food curiosity usually trumps my pseudo-vegetarian-pescatarian-whateverism, and besides they have a veggie dog, so we got in line to wait. (The line on Fridays and Saturdays, when they have duck fat fries, usually snakes around the block.)

And we waited. And we waited. Dudes, if you're trying to check out this place, wait until it is above freezing at least. Waiting outside for an hour when it is freaking fifteen degrees outside is miserable and pointless (duh, I guess, but you know, once we had committed...). Go in the spring, go on a weekday (the duck fat fries aren't anything special in my opinion), go prepared for an unimaginable level of food coma, and you will leave satisfied.

But take your vegetarian friends to Earwax, for god's sake, that veggie dog was a piece of rubber.




I can't believe I'm admitting I ate this... "saucisson alsacienne": sausage with grilled onions, creme fraiche, and camembert.


Duck fat fries... meh.