Check Out The Trailer For 'Hot Doug's: The Movie,' Coming In June

By Stephen Gossett in Food on May 2, 2017 4:42PM

Hot Doug's: The Movie

The closing of the late, lamented Encased Meat Emporium known properly as Hot Doug's has left devotees with a sausage-shaped hole in their hearts for more than two years now. But the rabid following of former owner (and counter staple) Doug Sohn—and they are legion—will soon to be able to relive some of that local, meaty glory in an upcoming documentary, appropriately titled Hot Doug's: The Movie.

The film is "totally in the can and ready to go," and the first public screening will likely arrive sometime in the second half of June, in Chicago, producer Nicholas Markos told Chicagoist. (The filmmakers hope to stage a few screenings and events before hopefully pressing on to other cities.) Markos and his brother Christoper, the film's director, just this week rolled out the trailer for their roughly 60-minute doc, which you can check out below. The late Homaro Cantu narrates in suitably hushed tones; we see one of those infamously long lines stretch north up California; Doug holds court at the register; and you can practically smell the duck fat fries.

Rather than a deep-dive "Ken Burns history" of Hot Doug's, as Nicholas puts it, the doc chronicles the closing stretch while "opening a window into how the restaurant worked." Along with Sohn, subjects also include Cantu, famed engineer and Electrical Audio head Steve Albini and former Punk Planet founder (and ranger badge creator) Dan Sinker—just a small handful of the late shop's countless evangelists.

"For a lot of people, there was a real connection, so I'm not surprised that [the devotion] is still there," said Markos. "It's like a song you loved in high school. There was something fundamental about the way people connected with the place."

[H/T Eater Chicago]