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Chicago has long been known as a baseball town, a pizza town, and a hot dog town. But the famous Chicago dog also comes with a fairly strict list of rules. Namely, ketchup gets laughed off the condiment list; dill pickles and tomatoes are a must; mustard is a given. Add in a Vienna Beef dog, and you’ve got yourself a Windy City classic.

The San Francisco Bay Area hasn’t agreed on one regional hot dog to rule them all — but it’s nevertheless been building up to its own hot dog moment. Locals know and love the late-night Mission dog, wrapped in bacon and grilled on the street. They embrace hot dogs eaten in the warm sunshine during a baseball game, a classic steamed Caspers dog and bun, the German sausages of Berliner Berliner (and before it, Rosamunde) paired with world-class beer offerings at Toronado, and Top Dog after a class at Cal.

But the Bay Area hot dog scene has recently evolved to a new level. While the standard bearers above remain stalwarts of the local landscape, the franks of the Bay Area are getting increasingly fantastical. The pandemic-born Quik Dog treated San Franciscans to an all-beef hot dog, split down the middle and grilled, with “doggie” sauce, mustard, sauteed onions, and jalapeno spread. Hayes Valley restaurant Hayz Dog opened in 2023, loading vegan- and beef-based hot dogs with ingredients like corn, fried shallots, and cilantro, or crema and smoked paprika aioli. Plus there’s pop-up Hej Hej spreading the good word of Swedish hot dogs loaded with bay shrimp salad, crispy shallots, and housemade pickles.

Michelin-starred SoMa restaurant Aphotic also serves a hot dog, although it’s not on the menu at the moment. It’s a tuna-based frank topped with Tsar Nicoulai caviar and luxe gold leaf — a dog befitting the elegant seafood-centric restaurant. Meanwhile, the chefs at Lion Dance Cafe just unveiled their hot dog-focused vegan food menu at the new Oakland bar Tallboy. These Impossible-brand vegan dogs feature toppings like artichokes, kimchi, soy-pickled chiles, gochujang-inflected aioli, and sambal mayo. “You can make infinite variations,” says Lion Dance Cafe chef C-Y Chia. “I sent [Tallboy] so many ideas of hot dogs and I have a list of 65 more.”

The Progress, sister restaurant to James Beard Award-winning State Bird Provisions, has its own off-menu hot dog known as the “Prog Dog,” which has been an IYKYK special for the better part of eight years. The restaurant’s fans have embraced the dish despite its limited availability: just 12 Prog Dogs a night, by request only. It first launched as part of a sandwich and cocktail promotion available during Negroni Week, but soon took on a life of its own as a creation by then-Progress sous chef Christina Teav — now of Mama Teav’s chile crisp fame.

According to owner Stuart Brioza, Teav wanted to make a Japanese-style hot dog and the team stepped up to collaborate. What came out of it was a double-smoked pork hot dog cased in-house. Co-owner Nicole Krasinski worked on a togarashi-rosemary milk bread-style bun, baked fresh daily and brushed in garlic lard before being toasted. The kitchen staff then topped the dog with the restaurant’s kimchi and a bonito-rosemary aioli, plus crunchy bits of bonito, fried shallot, garlic, and sesame. “It was born and it was love at first sight,” Brioza says. “It was one of those things that you put together, you put it into a bun, and you’re like, ‘Okay, something just happened.’”

Unlike other dishes at the Progress or, say, State Bird Provisions, the Prog Dog remains the same despite the changing seasons and the produce that comes with them. “It is perfect,” Brioza says, “we don’t change it.” Brioza’s a hot dog guy with his own rules and ideas about what makes a really great dog, including grinding high-quality meat, then air-drying and smoking the sausages (usually 100 at a time), which get vacuum-sealed for storage. The dog must also overhang the bun. The milk bread buns are the main limiting factor for the Prog Dog’s availability since the team bakes just 12 daily. While the Prog Dog is not the newest dog on the block, Brioza welcomes the fresh entrants to the restaurant hot dog scene. “I don’t know what the phenomenon is,” Brioza says, “but I’m stoked that people are waking up to the virtues of a good dog.”

2024-05-07T17:39:50Z dg43tfdfdgfd