For those that may not remember that I owned a hot dog cart, enjoy!
I'm watching a food show on best hot dogs in the world. It's funny that the ladies at Pinks said there's nothing like the aroma a fresh dogs and buns steaming ... it floats over the neighborhood.
I could smell our dogs all the way up the block from where the cart was. Our most ardent customers where the actual residents of the neighborhood. Second were those that worked in the area and could smell the dogs a block away.
In Los Angeles, there are rarely places to get good dogs. The main thing I went for were more expensive dogs, but Kosher and great tasting. I always told my daughter that people will come back for a great dog!
Here are pictures of our business/menu card:
I designed them myself (grins). That's my daughter when she was preggers with Zaire, and Yoon, who oversaw the operation at that time.
4 comments:
surprise to me. Jewish dogs. People in Jersey make good livings from those carts if they claim a good corner or roadside stop. Alas, there's the challenge. Get too near someone else's spot, bad things can happen.
When did you give it up?
When Zaire turned two, so we had it about three years. Sold the cart, but the guy who bought it failed to pay the last $500 on it, and took it from the commissary where it was stored and drove it to Texas (laughs). Oh well. It was brand new when I had it built, I think I paid $3,500 for it and we sold it for $2,500 (less of course, the $500 the loser didn't pay us). For a while, Mercedes found a spot at night by an old building where musicians practiced. She made good money there, but she did have to lock up and clean up the cart after midnight, which I was not all too thrilled with. We had a good spot when we first started out, at the Red Line Metro Train Station where you get off to go to Universal City. Then the City of Los Angeles decided to license all carts that used the Metro to sell. I signed up, but the irony of all ironies is that (1) they wouldn't let you own more than one cart (I was thinking of getting another one), but (2) they required you had worker's compensation in the aggregate sum of $1 million! Now, if the cart had to be owner/operated, why the fuck would I need $1 mil in worker's comp? One also needed $1 mil in liability insurance, but that I understood. Needless to say, we moved off the premises. But the City never got successful with the hot dog business, as there is only one operating cart that I know of at this time. Now, mind you, ours was regulation and covered by the city, licensed and taxed. The carts that I see today are usually shopping carts (the square kind older people own to do their grocery shopping) on which they place a flat pan with propane gas tank under it, making it like a grill. They have the dogs there, onions and bell peppers cooking as well. Some wrapped in bacon. The smell is great, but honestly, they buy cheap hot dogs, and although it satisfies that urge to have a dog, it comes nowhere near a good Kosher one. I always feel let down when I get one. As for Pinks, a place that used to run in relative obscurity for many years, the lines these days are just too ridiculous. Sometimes it can take an hour standing in line just to get a hot dog!
Oooo...as much as I love traditional Southern-style hot dogs, I really like the New York take on 'em. And you would be hard-pressed to find a good street vendor around here. But...
Just a couple of years ago I was driving home through Chickamauga, Georgia, and there on the highway-side was a man with a red hot dog cart proclaiming "Authentic New York Style Hot Dogs". I stopped, ordered one, and enjoyed it while talking hot dogs with the vendor --- an elderly Southern gentleman who had been stationed in NY-NJ for many years with the Navy. He went to great lengths extolling the superiority of the New York, and it was hard to disagree. Steamed bun, kosher dog, mustard, red onion, and his own homemade sauerkraut. Needless to say, I stopped by often afterward.
Glad to hear from others who have a penchant for a good New York hot dog!
I am PROUD, I tell ya, PROUD to be a part of the street culture of owning a hot dog cart, serving Kosher New York style dogs!
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