Being an old Chicago guy, the opening of Pug's Dog House was cause for celebration for me. A real, no-kidding Chicago hot dog stand right here in Dayton! You can find it at the Wilmington/Irving interesction in the Shroyer Park area, in a little strip center just south of the Wilmington Place old folks home.
Places like pugs were all over town, and into the suburbs. No chains, just indy operations. 
Pugs is quite authentic. The place has it all...Chicago-style hot dogs, which I am sure most of you have heard of, but also "tamales" (which are not real tamales but a sort of street food version unique to Chicago), and the hard -to- find (outside of Chicagoland) Italian beef sandwich. They have other things, too, like Polish sausage, etc...but I go there for the hot dogs and Italian beefs.
If you go to Pugs order the "City Dog", as thats the hot dog with all the works, including the peppers. But remember, there is no ketchup on a Chicago hot dog!
(And try the Italian beef, too).
Which begs the question about Dayton local street food or local foodways. Whats' special about Dayton? Pancake houses and breakfast places seem to be a local thing. The stewed tomatos at Pine Club and the garlicy dressing they used to have at Domnics. Anything else, I wonder?
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Plugs for Pugs
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Salt! You've got Cassano's salted crust pizzas and aside from the garlicky house dressings at Dominic's, the Pine Club, and Anticoli's, all three followed the same trend of serving baskets of salted bread, usually heavy on rye/pumpernickel.
I think Dayton has its own style pizza—thin crust and cut into small squares. It seems like a lot of the independents around town do it like that.
Yes. Marion Glass and Vic Cassano started as partners. That's why the pizzas have similarities.
I like Chicago style dogs, a lot. A guy downtown, on the square, had a stand that made some choice Chi-town dogs and loaded them with serrano (sport) peppers with no extra charge, but I tipped well.
Yikes...Cassanos salt! I had one of those when I first moved here and I thought there was some screw-up in the kitchen.
The little square bits might be in more cities, but I do recall my favorite local pizza joint, Ron's (used to deliver in my area), does it that way.
Another good Chi-dog stand downtown is a cart over at the Federal Building plaza.
Post a Comment