What's A Seattle Hot Dog? The Emerald City's Nasty Creation Is Delicious

SEATTLE, WA - You got your Chicago beef, your Philly cheesesteak, your New England Clam Chowder, your Rocky Mountain oysters, and your Kentucky fried chicken (we guess?). What are you missing?

Your Seattle hot dog.

That's right, the salmon capital of North America, the town known for Dr. Fraiser Crain, fancy coffee, and grunge music, actually has its own style of hot dog. And Wednesday - National Hot Dog Day - is the perfect day for you to try one out at home.

What's a Seattle hot dog? It's a hot dog with cream cheese and onions.

OK, don't upchuck just yet - it's actually good, like ice cream and french fries, or jelly beans and yogurt. According to local lore (Wikipedia), the Seattle hot dog was invented in the 1980s by a bagel cart operator in the Pioneer Square neighborhood named Hadley Longe. Longe apparently put hot dogs on bialy sticks with a schmear. (According to news reports, Longe now manages a restaurant in Couer d'Alene, Idaho.)

After that, the warm cream cheese dogs just grew in popularity. They got so popular that Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners, began serving the white-and-red bun buddies circa 2008. The Seattle Weekly in 2012 did a deep dive exploration of the Emerald City's cured meat and dairy experience, and it contains a brilliant quote from a hot dog vendor that, perhaps unintentionally, explains the difference between the East and West coasts.

"A Seattle Dog is, obviously, cream cheese and onions," Joe Bernstein, owner of Joe's Grilled Gourmet Hot Dogs near Safeco, told the paper. "We're not like the East Coast. East Coast is mustard and kraut. New Yorkers, they walk up and go 'Yeah, I'll take a hot dog with kraut.' And I'll say, 'And cream cheese?' They look at me like, 'Cream cheese?'"

This National Hot Dog Day, just say yes to "and cream cheese."

Image via Neal McNamara/Patch.com, and Evan Swigart/Creative Commons