I don't know about you, but when I think of when of Chicago, the first thing I think of is sausage. Maybe I've got a piece of Polish saaaausage lodged in my heart, but if I make a trip to the Chi and miss out on encased meats, I'm gonna be really disappointed. On my last trip there I made a pilgrimage to Hot Doug's, only to find it was closed on Sundays. I would not be thwarted again.
We arrived at 11:10 to a line wrapped around the building, 'we' being me and my brother-in-law Noah, a man who takes his sausages very seriously. He must have sensed some apprehension on my part, because he began assuring me that the line moves quickly once it gets inside. Most of the people in the queue could be summed up with three adjectives - big, hungover, and pasty. As I had imbibed my share of the sauce the night before, I too was looking forward to the restorative effect of Doug's duck-Fat Fries; that's right, molten duck fat used in place of the usual vegetable oil in the fryer. Noah's a big fan of those, and an even bigger fan of the 'game of the week' sausage, announced by a blinged out Jackalope.
Chardonnay-infused rattlesnake, anyone? Clearly this Doug has gone mad with power, but he hides it well, as he takes every order and sincerely wishes each customer a nice day. I had a bad experience eating rattlesnake once, so I instead opted for the 'celebrity sausage-' Catalonian pork with saffron dijonnaise and Castelinhos aged manchego. Like R. Kelly, Noah went for the double up, and got both. He also informed me that I was technically violating Chicago's two-sausage minimum law, and that ordering one of the regular dogs (as the people in front of us did) is, "a real amateur move."
The interior decor may be reminiscent of a Chuck-E-Cheese, but there is a serious gourmet mind behind the dogs served in these walls. (It comes as no surprise that Doug was one of the few people actually fined by the city for violating - flaunting, even - their foie gras ban.) Biting into the Catalonian, you experience a pleasant snap of the casing, a rush of garlicky porky juices, and then a saffron wave followed by the richness of the manchego. My favorite thing about this dog is how the manchego is cut to look like onions - there's got to be a fancy culinary word for this, but I'm not sure what it is. I'll just call it sublime. And good luck following your doctor's recommendation to limit your pork intake to 400 grams a day if you are ever in the neighborhood.
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