What is a Kansas City hot dog? Claim sparks search for answers — and sauerkraut
According to Jose Andres, famous chef and humanitarian, a Kansas City hot dog is better than the overstuffed Arizona Sonoran hot dog, but not as good as the cream cheese dog from Seattle.
Wirecutter, the review website owned by The New York Times, had the chef try various regional hot dogs in order to declare the country’s best version of a hot dog. The Kansas City hot dog did not win, but watching the New York Times bracket video brought up an important question:
What in the world is a Kansas City hot dog?
As a newbie to KC, it wouldn’t be an unexpected question for me to ask. But what I found surprising was the head-scratching among my seasoned KC colleagues, and beyond that, the Kansas City foodies, cooks, residents and hot dog enthusiasts I spoke to.
At Wiener Kitchen in Overland Park, a group of four men that meet at the sausage counter and restaurant every Wednesday for lunch had never heard of the Kansas City version, despite it being mentioned feet away from their table on a menu board.
“What would you think a Kansas City hot dog would be?” I asked.
“I would suspect it has to do with barbecue,” said Eric Helm, who lives in Olathe. His friend, Andy Beals of Overland Park, assumed the same, a logical hunch given the city’s reputation for smoking meats.
But per Wirecutter’s description, a Kansas City dog is a Reuben-style hot dog, and in the publication’s video, the sausage is an all-beef wiener in a potato roll, topped with sauerkraut, melted Swiss cheese, thousand island dressing and caraway seeds.
The Wiener Kitchen diners weren’t the only Kansas Citians perplexed by this description. Ryan Miller, general manager at Midtown’s Minibar who makes creatively topped hot dogs using ingredients like chili mayo, gochujang sauce and Grillo’s pickles, said it would make more sense for this hot dog to be of Omaha origin, the debated birthplace of the Reuben.
“I’ve heard of (the Kansas City hot dog) before, but I just always assumed that someone made it up for the city,” Miller said. “I’ve never had one. I bet it would be good.”
His Minibar hot dog menu is one of many around KC that makes no mention of this so-called Kansas City hot dog.
Even Andrea Broomfield, who has written about Kansas City food and restaurant history, couldn’t quite wrap her head around it.
“I was flummoxed when I saw the (New York Times) piece,” she said in an email.
She had a different take than most on what she would assume a Kansas City hot dog would be. In Broomfield’s opinion, it would include “KC-style chili,” like the kind from Dixon’s Famous Chili.
Where to find a ‘Kansas City hot dog’
Look at various restaurant menus around the city, and many that make a hot dog also have a chili dog. Only a couple seem to offer the Kansas City Reuben-style hot dog, and one of those is The Brick, open since 1999. The owner told me she’s had the Kansas City hot dog on their menu for nearly 20 years.
The hot dog at The Brick is probably the most similar to the one featured in the Wirecutter video, though it isn’t in a potato bun — The Brick uses a poppy seed bun, like the kind used for Chicago dogs — nor does it use caraway seeds as a topping.
Dave Derr, owner of Wiener Kitchen, also has the KC Frank on his menu, though it takes a few liberties: The sauerkraut is actually a “Brussels-kraut” (thinly shredded, then fermented Brussels sprouts), he swaps thousand island for mustard (though he admits he wouldn’t be mad at a dog dressed in the tangy pink condiment), the Swiss cheese is shredded instead of melted and the hot dog sits in a New England-style split-top bun.
If you had asked him many years ago what a Kansas City hot dog might look like, he’d have pointed you to a hot dog he had at the former Sprint Center (now the T-Mobile Center), which came with barbecue sauce, crispy onions and even brisket on top of a beef hot dog. When he developed an even deeper passion for hot dogs and sausages — so much so that he opened his own business — he consulted the experts, a trade association known as the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council.
“I can get down with that,” Derr said of the council’s definition. “And we have enough barbecue around. Let’s leave our barbecue as barbecue and our hot dogs as hot dogs.”
Where does Reuben-style hot dog come from?
The authority of hot dogs and sausage make reference to the Kansas City hot dog on their website under a page titled “Regional Hot Dogs.” Our city’s hot dog, according to the council, includes sauerkraut and melted Swiss cheese on a sesame seed bun. Wirecutter confirmed with me that they also used information from the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council for the hot dog bracket.
I consulted the council about how they came to declare Kansas City’s hot dog as this Reuben-style sausage. Eric Mittenthal, president of the association, said the hot dog variations usually originated from ballparks, like Kauffman Stadium.
And Kauffman Stadium, home to the Kansas City Royals, was able to confirm that a former vendor called Dugout Doghouse, which The Pitch wrote about in 2010 as a new vendor at Kauffman, served a Kansas City dog with “Swiss cheese, grilled sauerkraut and Boulevard Pale Ale mustard.”
Kauffman Stadium no longer offers a dog similar to this so-called Kansas City hot dog. And beyond 2010, the senior director of the Royals Hall of Fame Curt Nelson was able to point me toward a book published in 1999, “Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age.”
The book, as well as a New York Times Magazine article in 1996, wrote about a Kansas City hot dog variation that’s topped with sauerkraut and melted Swiss cheese, both making note that cities with high hot dog consumption or a regional hot dog also had a wave of German or Eastern European immigration.
The link to sauerkraut on sausages makes sense to KC food historian Broomfield, who’s also the English department chair at Johnson County Community College.
“Given the strong German influences of the 19th and into the 20th century, Kansas Citians love to top their hotdogs — or brats — with sauerkraut,” Broomfield said.
The other toppings in the Wirecutter video? And the potato bun? Not so much.
What I discovered was certainly interesting, but it does not answer the exact when and the why of this hot dog’s origins, information I couldn’t trace before my deadline came crashing down on me.
What I can say is this: Styles or regional versions of foods don’t equally stick the landing, like with pizza, barbecue and hot dogs. The elusive Kansas City hot dog will likely never be at the level of fame of the better-marketed Chicago dog. But maybe it could, Miller from Minibar points out — kind of like how the Seattle-style hot dog, with a cream cheese spread and topped with caramelized onions and jalapeños, has risen in popularity. It was the hot dog that won Wirecutter’s bracket.
“Kansas City could come together and come up with a better idea,” Miller said of the Reuben-style dog. “But I think there should be one. KC deserves a flagship dog to call home.”
