Wiener Take All

Philly, all of a sudden, is a hotbed of hot dog and sausage activity.

by Drew Lazor

Neal Santos REN FARE: Bret Cavanaugh (left) and Dan Semko brandish a handmade sausage in their mobile meat truck. It's just one of several businesses new to the Philly forcemeat game.

Cheesesteaks, hoagies, roast pork — this here's a sandwich town, and no one can dispute that. But where does this intrinsic sense of crusty-loaved fealty leave Philly's cabal of venerable wiener servers?

Places like A.P.J. Texas Wieners (on Arch), Texas Wieners (in South Philly), Frank's a Lot and Johnny's Hots have been making sweet tubesteak music for decades. Even relative newcomers, like Moe's Hot Dog House, have built up fanatical followings. The bacon- and cheese-strewn Texas Tommy, aka the best idea I've ever heard of, is a purely regional conception. So why is Philly's frank scene perpetually overshadowed?

"I don't think Philly will ever have the hardcore hot dog culture of places like New Jersey and New England, because most of us grew up with hot dogs being just cheap junk food, rather than a local specialty that's taken seriously," says Hawk Krall, the local illustrator and Drawing for Food blogger who writes the "Hot Dog of the Week" column on seriouseats.com. "[But] while they don't always get hyped, there's still plenty of places to get hot dogs here."

In the past months, a number of new players to the hot dog game have joined those ranks, compounding our exposure to nitrate-laden wonderment.

Renaissance Sausage

"I've always been fascinated with sausage," says Lambertville, N.J., native Bret Cavanaugh, a carpenter who teamed up with longtime buddy Dan Semko to roll out the Renaissance Sausage truck on May 2. "As I got older, I wanted to figure out how to make it." He has figured it out, if the mob scene at Renaissance's Sunday Headhouse farmers market stop is any indication (they also vend at the Piazza on Saturdays).

Cavanaugh, who's worked in a butcher shop, has owned his own meat grinder for years, but he and Semko really started taking the idea of their local/organic sausage-making operation seriously about a year ago. "We get people that are really curious," says Semko. "Like, 'How do you make organic sausage? Does it grow out of the ground?'" Not quite — Albert's Organics and Lancaster Farm Fresh are just two of the many purveyors they rely on to source raw materials. They put in between 30 and 40 hours a week at Philly Kitchen Share stuffing upwards of 400 sausages — lamb and beef; free-range chicken; a juicy, herbaceous all-pork link; an all-vegetarian option — for the coming week. They also do fresh sides like cole slaw and wheat berry salad.

Semko estimates that they could slash the truck's materials budget in half if they were not so particular about the sources of their protein and produce, but it's as vital to Renaissance's operation as gasoline is to their boxy orange-and-gray ride. "We're really not trying to recreate any bold concepts," he says. "We're trying to introduce quality." renaissancesausage.com, twitter.com/thesausagetruck.

The Dapper Dog

Late late-night eats — we're talking Texts From Last Night late, not "get your orders in by 11:59 p.m." late — are still an elusive proposition here in Philly, so we're fortunate that operations like the Dapper Dog are touching down. Friends Seth Russell and Harry Stormes just started dishing out griddled skinless Nathan's franks, splaid out on chewy Sarcone's rolls and dressed with atypical toppings like grilled potatoes, asparagus and fried eggs. Their main base of operations is the corner of Second and Poplar, meaning the glinting cart you catch an eyeful of as you're booted out of past-last-call Standard Tap is not a craft brew-provoked mirage. (They do lunch Wednesday, serve from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. Thursday and from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. Friday and Saturday.)

"People don't really think of hot dogs when they come to Philadelphia," says Stormes, a D.C. native and Tyler graduate. "We definitely thought about a regular hot dog and how it could be improved."

"Basically," Stormes adds, "we sat and ate hot dogs for a long time."

"[Hot dogs] are a versatile thing," says Russell, who taught English in Philly public schools before teaming up with Stormes. "There are so many different ways to do it." Our favorite way that they do it: The Coney Island Express, topped with wobbling mounds of rich chili, banana peppers and shredded melted cheddar. Second and Poplar streets, -203-887-8813, thedapperdog.org, twitter.com/thedapperdog.

Starvin Marvin's Super Dogs

Northeast Philly is — quite unapologetically — a pizza and cheesesteak part of town. (Hello, Steve's!) That's precisely why George Mamalis and his family avoided both caloric pillars when developing the month-old Starvin' Marvin's. "The feedback I've been getting from people is that they are looking for something different," says Mamalis. "If you have a menu for one pizza/cheesesteak place, you have the menu for all of them." Mamalis' father, in classic Greek fashion, has run a few of those spots himself — he estimates his pop has opened more than 50 different restaurants, from Italian to diners to hoagies, over his career.

The food at Marvin's is a 180 from all of that. The kid-friendly operation (feel free to get the arcade game buttons greasy) serves all-beef franks, hot kielbasa and turkey dogs provided by New York's Sabrett's. There are upwards of 35 specialty dogs (their signature comes hooked up with grilled onions and mushrooms, jalapeno cheese, bacon bits and chili), and you're also able to customize your dog with somewhere in the realm of 50 fresh-prepped toppings. For the daring, there's a "Ginormous Super Dog," a foot-long situation thrice the width of your average wiener. Fresh-ground burgers, milkshakes and fries round out the eats. 6571 Roosevelt Blvd., 267-344-8361, starvinmarvinsuperdogs.com

Nicky and Pete's

Nicky Umile's family ran a pizzeria out of their 64th Street storefront for a quarter-century before they decided to hang it up and rent out the space to an outside operator. When that business tanked, the Overbrook native hired his recently laid-off brother Pete to launch this out-of-the-way hot dog gem about a year ago. The Umiles split and griddle Dietz & Watson's franks and serve them up in more than a dozen different ways, from a "West Philly Special" smothered with Whiz, onions and a secret family-recipe sauce (Umile's guarded about its specific contents, but lets on that it contains beef, veggies and "seasonings" — for our purposes, a thinner, bean-less chili) to the classic, esoteric Philly "surf and turf," a fried fish cake and a wiener on the same bun. Speaking of bread — Nicky and Pete's serves their dogs on the round club rolls usually reserved for homemade pork sandwiches and the like.

"You have your hot dog carts, but never a hot dog and sausage store in this area," says Umile of his decision to open up shop. He and his brother serve a big menu beyond dogs, too, one that includes rib-sticking fare like tripe sandwiches, cheesesteaks, hoagies, softshell crab and chicken cutlets. 349 N. 64th St., 267-292-5414.

Wunder Dog

Slated to open around Labor Day, Wunder Dog is lawyer and former Republican candidate for District Attorney Michael Untermeyer's foray into the forcemeat fray. Currently under construction at 1735 South Street, a space Untermeyer owns, the 700-square-foot restaurant should offer a tight selection of atypical dogs (specifics are still up in the air), plus barbecue beef brisket and boneless pork chop sandwiches.

"Unlike running for D.A., which had a definitive beginning and end, I can create my success without being dependent on hundreds of thousands of voters to support me," explains Untermeyer, who was thoroughly impressed by operations like Chicago's Hot Doug's on a recent wiener research expedition.

Untermeyer adds that he's looking forward to experiencing "people actually happy with you" — a privilege he jokes he doesn't come across very often as a lawyer. 1735 South St.

(drew.lazor@citypaper.net)