My daughter is a big wheel Vice President for a corporation based in San Francisco. She lives and works remotely from Alexandria, Virginia. A good portion of her team is in Moldova.
Consider her workday in which she needs to be available for both her west coast and her Eastern European Moldova colleagues. That’s a time zone spanning a total of twelve hours. Her field is Human Resources though I much prefer her title which is VP, People Operations. “Human Resources” sounds so cold.
She recently asked me the interesting question above that she uses as an icebreaker in meetings to stimulate discussion and debate. The hotdog originated in either Frankfurt, Germany or Vienna, Austria but has become a stalwart of American cuisine. We eat 20 billion per year and 150 million on July 4 alone.
Let’s get to it. Much as I detest beginning an argument with a dictionary definition it can serve as a starting place. Merriam Webster defines a sandwich as “two or more slices of bread or a split roll having a filling in between.” By that definition, hotdogs seem to qualify as sandwiches.
Not so fast.
Early street vendors would lend gloves to customers while they ate hot meats. The gloves were not always returned and so were replaced by buns. The point is that the bun was never a part of the original design. Take that Merriam Webster! Even if one views a hotdog as a sandwich now, it was certainly never intended to be one.
Chicago style hotdog lovers like to point out that there are often other fillings and condiments included, as in a sandwich. True, however, Chicagoans also think they invented something new in their deep-dish pizza when in this New Yorker’s view, it is just a variation of a slice of Sicilian. Go figure.
The “windy city” was not given its nickname due to its breezes, but instead due to its overly verbose politicians. Back to my side. You would not normally find a hotdog on the menu of a sandwich shop. Also, in a sandwich the fillings are stacked vertically between two slices of bread. Hotdog buns, on the other hand, remain connected and they surround the dog horizontally rather than vertically.
What does the data show? The Dscout Marketing company received 600 responses in less than 48 hours on this question. 61% of the respondents said a hotdog is not a sandwich with 39% saying it was. A Harris Poll of over 2000 adults concurs with 57% saying a hotdog is not a sandwich and 33% saying it is. 10% remain undecided. Surprisingly, older Americans say it is a sandwich, and younger Americans say it is not. Say it ain’t so Boomers!
Best hotdog I’ve had is still a Hebrew National. They have to answer to a higher power. If you want more snap maybe a Nathan’s. Both are, of course, all beef. Worst was a Maine red dog. Awful. Stick to lobsters, Maine.
Hotdogs deserve their own unique category. They are both social and American. They are the food of barbecues and ballgames. You wouldn’t have a sandwich at a ballgame, would you? And please don’t put ketchup on your tube steak. Only Commies do that.
I am so proud of my daughter who got some of her love for debate and the necessary skills to do so, from our family dinner table discussions. Other critical and probing questions of the universe to come.
Jim Cross is a retired Fort Lewis College professor and basketball coach living in Durango. Reach him at cross_j@fortlewis.edu.
