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Japadoggin’

I make it a point to always get some street food whenever I’m travelling, and Vancouver’s signature street food is the Japadog, a hot dog done Japanese-style. Here’s my coworker David smiling in anticipation of a delicious east-meets-west organ-meats-in-casings lunch on Friday:

Part of Japadog’s charm is their delightful Engrish signage. It’s so very charmingly quirky that I wouldn’t be surprised if their misspellings and malapropisms were intentional. After all, they did get me to take this photo and post it online:


Click the photo to see it at full size.

I had the “Spicy Cheese Terimayo Dog”, their biggest seller in 2010, pictured below:

I’d never describe it as spicy, nor would I call the sauce spread over it “cheese”. The shredded nori gives the dog a “Japanese” flavour, but in the end, it wasn’t the “Western food through the Japanese funhouse mirror” kind of good that a number of other places have mastered (MOS Burger are particularly good at this).

I think I would’ve preferred the Oroshi dog: bratwurst with green onions and soy sauce. Maybe I’ll grab one before taking the train to the airport tomorrow.

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It Happened to Me

Slice of Life: Oooh! Kosher Hot Dog Vending Machine!

Take a gander at this – it’s a Maven’s Kosher Foods vending machine. It will cook and serve a kosher hot dog – the food of my in-laws! – on the spot for you, in exchange for five dollars:

hot dog vending machine

There are a couple of these at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where I’m spending the next couple of days as a track lead at Microsoft’s TechDays conference.

Being the curious kinesthetic sort, I have decided that in spite of the fact that TechDays serves a free lunch, I must try a vending machine hot dog. I’m always up for a new experience, and it’s also a good excuse to use the HD videocamera that the Ginger Ninja gave me for our wedding anniversary. Some brave souls and I will order and eat a hot dog from this machine while recording it for posterity and to contribute to the sum of human knowledge. Watch this space!

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Spaghetti Dogs: The Cheap and Cheerful Treat

The recipe shown on this website is simple and inexpensive: insert dry spaghetti into hot dogs and boil until the pasta’s done:

Hot dogs slices with spaghetti noodles coming out of them

The author of the original post speaks Russian, but posted this note for English readers:

i collect in this lj blog photos and links to this new form of food art, we tentatively call "hot dogs strikes back". it is primarily made by inserting dried spaghetti into the hot dogs and then boiling the resulting concoctions. it is fun to make and fun to eat for the whole family and the variations seem endless. if you do engage into experimenting with different forms of this "art", please take photos and drop me a link. i will post it here, so we can keep the project alive.

You can go “upmarket” by using fancier noodles, such as those made with spinach or squid ink:

upmarket_spaghetti_dog

I just might have to try this out for lunch next week. I’ll bet I can do something interesting with dry noodles and cooked meatballs.