Member-only story
Does Your Wiener Cut the Mustard?
Memories of a train station in Europe
The very best hot dog I’ve ever had in my life I ate at the Frankfurt train station in Germany. I don’t think I can actually call it a hot dog, though. A frankfurter maybe?
I was just a teenager at the time and I loved trying new foods. My family and I were waiting for a train and my grandfather, who had met us there to take us south to his home, pointed out a food vendor with a small cart set up on the sidewalk. “You Americans think you know what a hot dog is. You want to find out what a real hot dog is like?” he asked. I’m paraphrasing, of course, because he said it in German and I don’t speak German so I’m just guessing he said something like that.
It was nothing like the hot dogs one buys at the ballpark on a summer afternoon in America. On a small paper plate, the vendor served a wiener, a roll and a giant dab of mustard. My grandfather showed me how to eat it. He picked up the wiener with his hand, dipped it in mustard then took a bite. He then quickly dipped the roll into the mustard and took a bite of that.
I copied my grandfather. The wiener tasted better than any wiener I’ve ever had in America. And the roll was outstanding; a hundred times better than those flavorless, nutrient-free white bread hot dog buns sold in America. And the mustard…
Oh, the mustard! I thought I had died and gone to heaven. It was…
