National Chili Dog Day Sparks Debate, Who Has Best Dog In Lafayette?

Today is ‘National Chili Dog Day’ and some people think it means one thing and to some of us it’s something else.  Nationally most people think of a chili dog as a bun, wiener and chili with maybe cheese, onions and relish.  Growing up here in Lafayette I have fond memories of chili dogs as served at the A & W Root Beer stand at the corner of Moss and Jefferson.

To me a hot dog is a bun, chili and wiener but a ‘chili dog’ is a bun and lots of chili and nothing else.  You can argue that a bun with only chili can’t be considered a ‘dog’ because it does not have a wiener but I grew up with chili dogs without dogs.  I love hotdogs ( the wiener type ) and really love a good chili dog ( sans wiener ) but to get a chili dog these days you have to order a chili hot dog and remove the wiener yourself.  What’s the point in paying for the wiener if you’re not going to eat it?  By removing the wiener it makes sense to fill the bun with more chili therefore you make up for the meat content.  Makes sense to me.

Today on ‘Mornings With Ken and Bernie’ we had quite a few NewsJunkies call in to confirm that they enjoyed chili dogs as I did without the wiener but we concluded they were a ‘south of I-10 occurrence’.  To shoot that conclusion down we had a NewsJunkie confirm that growing up in a small town in Mississippi he too enjoyed chili dogs (sans wiener) at a local drive-in!  So we changed our conclusion and said maybe chili dogs (sans wiener) were a truly Southern thing but then a NewsJunkie called in to inform us that chili dogs were sold in his hometown in Maryland!

Chili dogs or hot dogs, whatever, it’s National Chili Dog Day so celebrate with a dog (or sans dog) of your own!