One of the other retail food service establishments in the Great Mall Food Court (which sounds like some kind of place where foods go on trial for being bad) is a place called “Hot Dog on a Stick.” Why it’s not called “Corn Dogs” is beyond me; could the term “corn dog” still be a trademark, or under copyright?
Naturally, the children gravitated to it, because it combines their two favorite food groups, hot dogs and sticks.
This is a place whose main claim to fame seems to be that the corn dogs– pardon me, hot dogs on a stick– are hand-dipped before they’re fried. Now, I don’t want to seem elitist, but even at it’s best this isn’t exactly a foodstuff that is going to show up on the Chez Panisse menu, and just what value is added by having it hand-dipped eludes me. It adds to the cooking time, and it lets you experience your child’s increasing impatience (expressed by a desire to attack the lemons that are artfully arranged on the counter, to advertise the $3 lemonade); but I defy anyone to argue that it’s actually a BETTER corn dog.
And aren’t corn dogs one of those foods that’s SUPPOSED to be mass-produced? It’s like sugar wafers, a form of cookie that is actually BETTER when it’s cheaper: the $3 organic Belgian ones have nothing on the 50-cent for a pound ones sporting artificial coloring that looks like it’s produced in a cyclotron.
October 7, 2004 at 5:27 pm
Check out the “original” corn dog or hot dog on a stick – since 1941, the Pronto Pup! Visit http://www.prontopup.net. Pronto Pups are the best tasting corn dogs anywhere. You can even get them at the “real great mall” the Mall of American in Bloomington, MN.