Hot Doug’s
On Saturday of our Chicago trip, Angie picked me up to go shopping at the mall and to hang out. We were supposed to meet up with our other friend, John, but we were exhausted from walking around the mall and the weather was also kind of cold, so we decided to hang out at Angie’s apartment and just watch television. I wanted to eat at Hot Doug’s because I read so much about their hot dogs and their foie gras fries, but I was also starting to feel a little under the weather. We decided to go to Hot Doug’s and the line was ridiculously long, but decided to wait since we didn’t have anything else planned for the day (just dinner with Ken’s family on Saturday night).
Hot Doug’s is known as “The Sausage Superstore”:
The line was out the door and we heard it was going to take a good two hours before we were inside. Since we didn’t have anything else going on and we were keeping each other company, we decided to wait it out. We waited for about an hour and 45 minutes before we got inside and actually saw the menu:
They don’t allow you to sit down until you’ve ordered (it’s a system that works, otherwise the tables won’t be available when people have their food ready). I was really hungry by the time we got to the door so I was strategizing what we should order. I suggested we all order two hot dogs, plus cheese fries and an order of the foie gras fries. Angie kept insisting that she wasn’t that hungry (but seriously, all we ate that day was a bunch of gummy bears and chocolate covered almonds – there was NO way she wasn’t hungry!) John was our voice of reason so we decided to get the order down to four hot dogs, cheese fries and foie gras fries:
The foie gras hot dog was a Foie Gras and Sauternes Duck Sausage hot dog with Truffle Aioli, Foie Gras Mousse and Fleur de Sel:
I’m glad we ended up sharing the hot dog because it was super rich with the foie gras mousse but it was also incredibly good; creamy foie gras with a pinch of Fleur de Sel. The duck fat fries were a little disappointing – not enough flavor and they were a little too greasy:
We also ordered the Anna Kendrick dog (A polish sausage), the Cordon Bleu dog (way too heavy and definitely too much stuff going on) and a hot dog with crawfish and shrimp (worth ordering). After our late lunch, I was really stuffed and I didn’t feel great (and at one point, I thought I misplaced my camera but decided to write it off because I felt so sick). We were on our way to the Shedd Aquarium to see the beluga whales (or so I thought). When we arrived, I saw Ken (and the rest of the story is here).
