Fat Frank's, Edmonton - Must Love Dogs

Hotdogs. Uniformly shaped, pink, rubbery tubes of meat and meat-by-product, ironically containing every animal except dog; and served on a lot of streetcorners here in Canada. This review was inevitable.

Fat Franks is a chain of 'dog vendors which usually operate from your standard sidewalk hotdog carts. We found one run inside a proper little shack on the side of the road, looking clean and smelling smokey. It would do just fine.

Before extras. Like a blank canvas.

The chain is best known for it's Honey Ham Smokie, so we ordered one of those, as well as a chili cheese dog. A fellow customer explained to me that a smokie is a sausage of higher quality, both in terms of spices and meats used. High quality hotdog eh? Sounded like an oximoron to me.

The most interesting thing about the hotdog culture is the vast array of condiments that you are encouraged to use to dress up your otherwise dry dog, which allows for endless variations of flavour. My pet sandwich smothered with raw onion, cucumber relish, sauerkraut and curried mustard. No surprise that after all that I couldn't make out the honey ham flavour at all. It was just a big, messy hotdog. Did I say messy? I mean it was an astronomical, apocolyptic dreadnaught of destruction. Imagine the Exxon Valdez spill if it was filled with curried mustard. Oh, and it was blowing a gale at the time. And there were no seats. Got the picture? I probably should have skipped the part where I tried to eat the thing, and just smeared it all over my shirt and trousers, just to save time.

Our end result.

The chili dog had the added benefit of extra richness thanks to the meat, with the drawbacks being the awful liquid cheese sauce dripping all over it, and the fact that this hotdog had become something closer to a soup once even more condiments were committed to the concoction.

Beer mustard. What a great idea.

AVERAGE

The flavour of each dog was dominated by whatever condiments were plopped on top, so my advice would be to get whatever the most basic, cheap hotdog is available, and then dress it up with a kilo of extras. There was no major difference between the smokie / regular dog in my opinion. Ill happily try another smokie at another vendor, in another town, but as far as Fat Franks go, Ill stick to the basics.



The bill (for 2):
1 x Honey Ham Smokie -CA$5.25
1 x Chili Cheese Dog - CA$5.70
TOTAL: CA$10.95 (Approx. US$10.50)

Restaurant address: Whyte Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

for exact locations of all reviewed restaurants, take a look at our map.