I Got A Beef With Eddie Being Such A Food Hardo
This blog is a long time coming. It’s been a powder keg ready to explode at a moment’s notice and today the match was finally lit. But first let me set the stage a little bit.
There are a handful of things you don’t mess with Eddie about and one of them is food. Today on the Chicago Dog Walk we tried to hash out our differences but it more or less came to verbal blow after verbal blow.
I’ll preface this by saying I’m a needler; I love to push buttons and troll. When I found out Eddie refuses to put mozz cheese on an Italian beef sandwich just because it’s not “traditional” I knew it would be something I could needle him on. And that’s what I do, and he doesn’t like it. In the end I don’t really care how Eddie likes his beef and I do respect a man who respects tradition, which we will discuss further along in this blog.
But this is beyond tradition. This is about Eddie thinking that a Gene and Jude’s hot dog is the holy grail of hot dog. And this goes back to us bringing Dente to Gene and Jude’s a few months back. Here’s the video in case you haven’t seen it yet, fast forward to 4 mins:
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Now Eddie says I completely threw Chicago under the bus with this review. Well in case you are blind, I gave Gene and Jude’s a glowing review here. I said it was phenomenal and it wasn’t until we got back in the car and went down to the south side to hit up a few more pizza joints that I said “agree with Dente, a good Chicago hot dog is a good hot dog for the most part.” I lied to Chicago’s face and for that I apologize. But I couldn’t feel more sanguine when I say that. 35th Street Red Hots, Fatso’s (though not boiled) and dozens of other places have mastered the art of making a Chicago dog. It’s just a fact.
Now for the outsiders reading this blog, here is a picture of a Chicago hot dog followed by a list of the ingredients:
– Vienna hot dog
– onions
– pickle spear
– celery salt
– mustard
– sport peppers
– tomato slices
– poppyseed bun
That is it. That is a Chicago hot dog. Now you can get a shitty version of a Chicago hot dog, but in general, Gene and Judes makes their hot dog the exact same way 1000 other places in Chicago make their hot dogs, other than one thing: they don’t use poppyseed buns. Just plain white bread buns. So technically, they’re not a Chicago dog. Sorry Eddie, traditional is traditional. Gene and Jude goes against everything you hold sacred. Not Chicago!
Argument = over.
Now I’m kidding there. I won’t nitpick on a goddamn bun just like I won’t nitpick on whether or not you like cheese on your beef.
And I do love a good hot dog here and there, and Gene and Jude’s makes a great one, but so do a billion other places. But for whatever reason Eddie puts them on some deified pedestal and thinks that if you disagree that they’re not the best hot dog in Chicago you’re a fucking moron.
Eddie also says they’ve been cooking their hot dogs forever and have mastered the art of boiling them. Well unless they boil their dogs in fucking holy water blessed by Jesus Christ himself, how can someone fuck this up? Answer: you can’t. And no, I am NOT talking about a fucking gas station hot dog, which Eddie so conveniently added to his argument even though that’s COMPLETELY nit picking.
I was talking about all of Chicago’s red hot stands that specialize in making hot dogs. In general, the variance from Gene and Jude’s to any other hot dog place is NOT that big like the variance from one pizza place to another could be, for instance.
So this was our hot dog argument. Our contentious arguments about food do not end there. Pizza, beefs and wings will be next on the Chicago Dog Walk.
I am taking Eddie to Al’s pizza in Warrenville tomorrow. He is also pissed because I wasn’t smitten by his Geo’s pizza review, his hometown pizza joint.
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This is a crucial part in Eddie and I’s relationship. Don’t be surprised if it ends up in a fist fight.
Listen to the entire 20 minute argument here: