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Where to get a good hot dog in Tampa Bay for National Hot Dog Day

 
MONICA HERNDON   |   Times The Chicago style hotdog includes mustard, relish, celery salt, freshly chopped onions, tomatoes, kosher pickle and sport peppers on a poppy seed bun, photographed on Thursday November 3, 2016 at Portillo\u2019s in Brandon. The Brandon restaurant is the first location in Florida for the chain that originated in Chicago.
MONICA HERNDON | Times The Chicago style hotdog includes mustard, relish, celery salt, freshly chopped onions, tomatoes, kosher pickle and sport peppers on a poppy seed bun, photographed on Thursday November 3, 2016 at Portillo\u2019s in Brandon. The Brandon restaurant is the first location in Florida for the chain that originated in Chicago.
Published July 18, 2018

Monday, July 23, is National Hot Dog Day. I don't know precisely why, but I think some major lobbying from the sausage board was involved. It's baseball season, it's barbecue season, it's I-don't-feel-like-cooking season. Those are plenty of reasons. So here's where to get the good ones in Tampa Bay.

Portillo's

1748 W Brandon Blvd., Brandon. (813) 210-8190. 2102 E Fowler Ave., Tampa. (813) 540-9001. portillos.com.

Fans can be found hunched over swaths of waxed paper dispatching Maxwell Street polishes, Italian beef and classic Chicago dogs dragged through the garden. Just about all of the building blocks of this chain are imported from the Windy City. (In fact, Chi-town transplants and snowbirds have been ordering Portillo's care packages for years.) Both the Tampa and Brandon locations are huge and sprawling with a loosely retro Prohibition-era vibe. The all-the-way dog is a classic: snappy casing, cushiony poppy seed-flecked bun with all the fixings — celery salt, chopped onion, tomato, pickle spear, sport peppers, mustard, crazy-green relish.

Coney Island Sandwich Shop

250 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. N, St. Petersburg.
(727) 822-4493.

Here's where things get confusing. Nathan's originated at the corner of Surf and Stillwell avenues on Coney Island in 1916, just 10 years before this Coney Island got its start. So you're thinking this is St. Pete's outpost of Coney Island-style dogs. Nope. It's Michigan-style dogs with coney sauce. The style got its start in the Greek- and Macedonian-owned diners of the Detroit area: hot dogs smothered in seasoned ground beef (no beans), plus mustard and onions. The St. Pete stalwart, the oldest restaurant in the 'Burg, traditionally does one stripe of mustard, but they'll go heavy if you ask (but no, shudder, ketchup).

Hot Dogs on Main

505 Main St., Dunedin. (727) 408-5103.

Susan Norton has been at it for years, tinkering with just about every wiener idiom there is, teaching dogs some new tricks along the way. She begins with skinless all-beef Vienna franks (there are veggie and organic turkey options, too) and then starts riffing. She has had Thanksgiving-inspired dogs topped with stuffing, whipped cream cheese and house-made cranberry chutney, and a big seller is the Dunedin dog with bacon, blue cheese dressing and crumbles, Buffalo sauce, coleslaw and a sprinkle of celery salt.

Kings Street Food Counter

937 Central Ave., St. Petersburg. (727) 914-2111.

Stephen Schrutt, who also owns the Avenue, has a different mission here: thick shakes, local craft beers on tap, grilled cheeses, hot dogs, poutine, salads and, oh, cronuts. Do these things go together? Yes, they do. Other assets: dog-friendly patio, open super late Friday and Saturday, seasonal themed movie nights on the second Wednesday of the month and, most important of all, the corn dog of my dreams. This is where to get a corn dog, blistering hot and enrobed in a sweet, crunchy wafflish batter with a ramekin of zingy grain mustard, all tucked in a brown cardboard to-go container with plastic silverware and your choice of side. Dogs are respectable all-beef Viennas; themed toppings are coherent.

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Mel's Hot Dogs

4136 E Busch Blvd., Tampa. (813) 985-8000.

You want a dog to snap when you bite it? Then you want one with the natural casing, made of sheep's intestine, as opposed to a "skinless" dog. (Kosher dogs are either skinless or made with an artificial collagen casing that lacks quite the same snap.) Mel's has the goods. This won't be news to aficionados who have been crowding into this red-and-white storefront near Busch Gardens since 1973. The red wienermobile outside beckons; inside, it's order at the counter. The house special is packed with sauerkraut, onion, mustard, relish and pickle. Still, the Polish sausage is a fat, juicy choice, accessorized with brown mustard and grilled onions.

Bruce's Chicago Grill & Dog House

7733 Ulmerton Road, Largo. (727) 524-1146.

Owner Bruce Karlin, here since 1994, has a more-is-more decorating motif in fluent Windy City: photos of Al Capone, da Bears and other local luminaries, dog-eared menus from Chicago greats, all haphazardly staple-gunned. The way to go here is the Chicago Dog, dragged through the garden (translation: with the works). That means a tender steamed poppy seed bun cradling a Vienna beef dog in the casing, topped with yellow mustard, alarmingly neon-green relish, a dill pickle slice, tomato and cuke, chopped onion, sport peppers and several shakes of celery salt.