Heavenly Hot Dogs

Every now and then I really want a hot dog, and not just any hot dog, but a pressed one from the street vender Dog do Ceu in the Bacacheri neighborhood in Curitiba, Paraná, Brasil. Those, as the name might imply, were from heaven.

You might be asking what makes their hot dogs so much better than any other hot dog. And that’s a reasonable question. One I will gladly answer.

For starters, it isn’t just a hot dog. The bun has to be the size of our hoagie buns here to get everything in it. You start with a hot dog, just a regular one. Nothing too special about it. But then you add a tomato sauce that is just so much better than ketchup for a hot dog. Put on some shredded chicken, diced tomatoes, lettuce, potato strips like the kind you top a salad with, cheese, corn. With everything inside the bun, you put the whole thing on a flat waffle type thing except without the waffle texture stuff, just two flat heated metal things, and you press the whole thing flat.

It was absolutely delicious. The cart would come out on the corner about the time of sunset, and after discovering their goodness, I came up with all kinds of reasons we needed to stop and get one on our way home. The other hot dogs I had down there were good, but really didn’t compare to those. I’ve fixed them a few times since coming home. It is a lot of work for a hot dog, but the results are so worth it.