Listen up you weenies, Austin might be known for its breakfast tacos, margs, barbecue and coffee, but it’s time to acknowledge another niche within the food scene.
Dogs. Franks. Wieners. Glizzies. Yes, hot dogs.
Whether you want a plain frank with a strip of mustard or ketchup (no judgment here) or you’re looking for a topping palooza with things like kimchi, elote or mashed potatoes, there are plenty of purveyors slinging those dawgs.
“I think there’s great hot dog representation on the streets right now,” Zak Drummond of Zee’s Wiener System said.
Drummond started Zee’s Wiener System in 2021 after moving to Austin a year earlier. It began as a way to meet people and have some fun, but his hot dog origin story goes back to his childhood on the East Coast. Drummond is from Rhode Island, where the hot dog culture runs back nearly a century.
“It’s just part of the landscape,” he said. “At the end of the street I grew up on, there’s a little gas station with a convenience store. And next to that was a hot dog joint called Nick’s. But that was the norm for that period of time in Rhode Island. You would just drive around, there’d be like these tiny hot dog joints all over the place.”
Justin Cook for Zee’s Wiener System
Zak Drummond is the man behind Zee’s Wiener System. He started the business in 2021 as a fun way to meet people, but since then he’s traveled to Marfa, New Orleans and Worcester, Massachusetts, for hot dog pop-ups.
Nostalgia for those days led him to create his first menu offering, “The Classic.”
Beyond the bun and frank, it consists of ground beef chili, yellow mustard, onions and celery salt.
“Very simple, but greater than the sum of its parts,” Drummond said. ”[They’re] really, really delicious. And those flavors and aromas together, like, perfectly capture my childhood. Every time I eat one, I feel a little bit younger, so I’m trying to eat more and more of them as I age.”
Zee’s Wiener System is not the only business leaning into nostalgia and sharing a regional variety with the Austin eaters. Miguel Kaiser runs T-Loc’s — or Tucson Locals — with his partner Zulma Nataren. Sonoran-style dogs are at the core of what they do.
“It’s a bacon-wrapped hot dog, pinto beans, sautéed onions, diced tomato, mayonnaise, mustard and jalapeño sauce,” Kaiser said. “So the combination, I tell people, should be hot, cold, tang, spice, sweet and salty … and people go for it.”
Kaiser comes from a culinary background, working in fine dining and hotels before he made the move to Austin and started T-Loc’s in 2013. Since then, he’s been working on elevating the hot dog that he calls a “comfort food” for many people.
“I think the hot dog, for some, it represents their region, where they’re from,” he said. “It represents that city or state. And, you know, people are proud about that. It’s like having your team, you know, you wear your jersey, same thing.”
Beyond regional loyalty to the different dogs, the excitement and increase of vendors might have something to do with people’s thoughts about the franks themselves.
Mike Farley has run Mission Dogs since 2013. Back then, he said, there were only a few places that specialized in hot dogs and many people viewed them as “questionable.”
“The main difference is now the public perception of hot dogs has shifted slightly,” Farley said. “It seems like there are less people out there that see hot dogs as cheap street meat. I think the quality and innovation in Austin from places like Zee’s Wiener System, Grandpa’s Glizzys, T-Loc’s and Mission Dogs helped open minds and [bellies] to what a hot dog can be.”
While Austin may not be a hot dog town in the same way Chicago or New York are, the scene here is still growing, with a new vendor popping up every six months or so, Drummond said. That’s despite it being a tough time right now for the food industry in Austin.
“The fact that I’m a professional hot dog vendor kind of says it all — the fact that I’m able to support myself and contribute to my household and do this professionally,” he said. “I think that’s more than I could have ever imagined when I first started doing this.”