The Winners (and Losers) of Royal Tavern’s Hot Dog Contest
Over 180 hopefuls entered, but most — including the "Schuylkill sizzler" and the "glizzy hoagie dip" — ended up in the doghouse.
Hot Dogs from “Royal Dog Days of Summer” / Photographs courtesy of Royal Tavern
Nic Macri barely entertains the question. Is a hot dog a sandwich? “No,” the Royal Tavern chef says. “I don’t think so. It’s its own entity.”
But can a hot dog be a hoagie? Or a Cubano? Theoretically, it can be both those things and more during Royal’s “Dog Days of Summer,” now in its second July of showcasing both regional and international hot dog styles, along with a few culinary crossovers and chef-driven inspirations. Macri has been serving up everything from the classics — Chicago dog, Sonoran dog, Coney chili dog — to such creations as a “Philly Surf-and-Turf” made with fish cake and pepper hash, the “Goin’ Goa Goa” featuring green chutney and pickled mango, and the “Rabe Rambler” topped with a piquant trinity of broccoli rabe relish, provolone, and roasted garlic.
The Dog Days of Summer began last year as a way to boost business at Royal in a month that is typically slow for Philly bars and restaurants. The goal was to sell 40 dogs a night, so Macri — who was a butcher for almost a decade in between stints at Southwark and Royal — made 400 hot dogs to get ready for Week One of July 2024. They sold 300 on the first day and wound up running out some nights. This year, they’re averaging more than 200 a day. Vegan dogs (not made in-house) were also added.
This year, Royal’s customers were able to get in on the fun: 186 people submitted their own dream wieners to the “Best in Show: Design Your Own Dog” contest, with the four best making their way to Royal’s menu to cap off the month. The contest called for entries in Royal’s four different hot dog cooking styles — steamed, griddled, char-grilled, or deep-fried. Macri and five other Royal principals narrowed down the field to 16 finalists, which were then put to a public vote.
The winners were announced today at 4 p.m., and after a month of heated competition, the winning dogs are in! For the steamed category, the “Hainan Dog” won with a dog topped with ginger garlic chili sauce, sweet soy drizzle, crispy chicken skin, cilantro, and scallions; the char-grilled category award goes to “Corn? When did I eat corn?” topped with chipotle mayo, cotija cheese, poblano salad, Tajin, and, you guessed it, corn; “Fried and Reckless” dominated the fried category with a bacon-wrapped dog topped with pimento cheese, crispy onions, and mustard; and finally, in the griddled category, “French-on Dog” won with a dog covered in caramelized onions, horseradish mayo, Gruyere cheese, crushed potato chips, and chives.
All of the competing hot dogs will be served tonight along with backyard barbecue-type sides during Royal’s Dog Days Blowout Cookout. Week Five hot dogs from the regular menu and winners will be available through the weekend. The top dogs, however, will be on the menu through the first week of August, or until they sell out.
From left: The surf-and-turf; the goa dog; the muffuletta. / Photographs courtesy of Royal Tavern
But what of the 170 other entrants that didn’t make the cut? Many were eliminated for being close to (or exactly like) hot dogs already on the menu. Others would have just been too demanding for the kitchen. “There was one with, like, a hot dog wrapped in croissant dough and wrapped in onions,” Macri says. The preparation was overly complicated, according to the entrant’s description: a sous-vide hot dog in beef consommé baked into a croissant stuffed with French onion soup onions and topped with Gruyère cheese-mustard cream sauce. “We physically can’t make more than, like, 10 of those a day. So that’s gotta go.”
A few were just high-concept jokes. “One was like a uranium dog: a rod of uranium in a hot dog bun,” Macri says. “I think that’s a reference to the opening credits of The Simpsons.” Another was The Thunderdog: “You order a hot dog and you dump your childhood trauma on your server or finish the hot dog. Whatever comes first. Weird things that are obviously funny to see, but we can’t do.”
There was also lots of overlap within the entries that were more competitive, where only one could rise above. “There’s a lot of hoagie versions,” Macri says. “A lot of kimchi. A lot of baked-potato-esque dogs. And a lot of esquites: street corn kind of dogs.” One of the hoagie entries was actually a “glizzy hoagie dip,” in which both the hot dog and the fixings would be chopped and mixed together on the bun. Served cold.
That one didn’t make it. Nor did hot dog versions of The Schmitter, Anthony Bourdain’s Internet-famous fried mortadella, or a french-fry laden sandwich à la Pittsburgh.
From left: The Iceland dog; the Sonoran; the Seoul dog. / Photographs courtesy of Royal Tavern
Even hardcore Philly themes did not always prevail. The “Frank Reynolds” called for pineapple, bacon, and rum glaze — a nod to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s rum ham. There was a hot dog parmigiana (in the deep-fried category, obviously), a hot dog named for Villa di Roma (with Alfredo sauce and chicken), and dogs that called for, respectively, Black Cherry Wishniak caramelized onions, Lebanon bologna, and DiBruno Bros. beer cheese.
“The Schuylkill Sizzler” — a hot dog on a pretzel bun with scrapple, cherry pepper-long hot relish, Cheez Whiz, and crushed Butterscotch Krimpets — also didn’t make the cut. But the “Brandog Marsh” came close. “Pickled carrots (for his beautiful red hair), grilled peaches (for his home state of Georgia), scallions, and a spicy sauce for our spicy boy,” the entrant wrote. “Steamed cuz he wets his hair.”
Steamed was actually the least popular category in the contest, with just 16 entries. But Macri considers that one of the two best ways to cook a hot dog, along with griddled. Those are the two methods that make a natural-casing hot dog both the juiciest and snappiest, and really let you taste it on its own terms. Truth be told, his pork-and-beef dogs — three parts pork shoulder to one part chuck and short rib — shine best in the simplest and most classic applications.
“I think the hot dogs with just mustard are fantastic,” he says. “I lean in that direction with hamburgers as well. If you’re using really good beef, why put a ton of different ingredients on it? But people like a ton of different ingredients. Some of them, I think the hot dog gets lost in it, because there’s so much stuff. But that’s also part of the fun.”
