Tribune: Put Ketchup on Your Hot Dogs if You Want!
By Anthony Todd in Food on Aug 3, 2011 8:20PM
Are you a Chicago purist? Or a "live and let live" eater? If you're the former, you're going to be annoyed with Kevin Pang, food writer for the Chicago Tribune. Pang has been teasing the twitter-sphere, saying that this week's article would create more mail than anything else written in the Tribune food section. When he said that, we expected something of consequence, like poisoning, or industrial animal abuse perhaps. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised - the story is about ketchup on hot dogs.
Pang takes on the mythos of the ketchup-free Chicago hot dog, asking "How did we get this way?" Turns out it's quite a story, which goes back over a hundred years. We won't give away the good parts, but the controversy is still going strong. Chicago mainstays like Gene and Jude's refuse to serve ketchup - but the convenience store next door sells plenty of it, indicating that the demand is there.
We have to admit that we (Gasp) like ketchup on our hotdogs. Born and raised outside of Chicago, this stance against the red nectar has always been a bit perplexing. Pang dissects it well, and concludes that you should do whatever you darn well please. Down with the rules, he says. "There's so much to love about our fair city, with a multitude of reasons to wave the "We're No. 1!" flag. Clinging stubbornly to a subjective ideal shouldn't be one of them." What do you think?