Recently, conversations in Louisiana got heated when local press and social media converged on a single, pressing, hot-button issue: what’s going on with the chili dogs in New Iberia?
Apparently — and I feel obliged to include a trigger warning here — what some people in New Iberia call a “chili dog” does not include the hot dog. It’s just a hot dog bun brimming with chili.
When word of the chili dog debate reached Rouses magazine, of course the person they would ask to write about it is me, a gluten-free vegetarian.
My first question was whether this was even true. I reached out to DJ Digital, morning show host on Hot 107.9 FM in Acadiana. He had discussed the topic with his listeners — and did they ever have some strong opinions. “They chose violence,” he said.
“I thought it might be a culinary Mandela Effect of local proportions. Some people said they live in New Iberia and have never heard of this. Others said, ‘Oh this is totally a thing.’ There’s just enough doubt that you can chalk it up to myth. But there’s just enough truth that people get really upset about it.”
Years ago, said Mr. Digital, there was a place in New Iberia called Freez-O that did indeed serve a hot dog-less chili dog. He even ate there as a child (though he couldn’t specifically recall whether there was a hot dog twixt the chili and bun).
His own sleuthing on something current turned up a snowball stand in New Iberia called Cool Scene. “It’s a snowball stand that serves everything unhealthy you can think of. I looked them up and, sure enough, they have on their menu ‘hot dog with chili,’ and right below it, ‘chili dog (no wiener).’”
He paused. “That’s the only proof there is,” he said, solemnly, before adding: “And for some reason, they’re both $5.80.”
When he posted the question to Facebook, the responses were all over the place. “This is the longest running debate in Acadiana history, aside from tomatoes in a gumbo,” wrote one person. And for every commenter who found the very notion of a hot dog-less chili dog absurd, there was someone else saying that they learned the hard way that in New Iberia, you have to order it “hot dog, add chili.” (Added another: “I don’t need no dog on a bun when I already got that dog in me.”)
The issue troubled me. When I went to bed that night, I spent eight hours staring at the ceiling. Chili dog. Chili dog. Chili dog.
What do we even mean when we say “hot dog”? Everyone would agree that a hot dog is a sausage-like meat resting in a hot dog bun. But is a “hot dog” not also the meat itself? If you made a shopping list, surely you would list both “hot dogs” and “hot dog buns” — two separate items.
Which means you would buy hot dogs to make hot dogs.
I could think of no other food like that. You buy taco shells to make tacos. Only a psychopath would say “buy tacos” meaning the shells alone. You buy ground beef to make a hamburger. Yes, you could buy “hamburger meat,” but you’re still specifying the meat as a constituent of the finished product. A hot dog is somehow the part, and the sum of its parts.
But a chili dog without the dog… We know what chili is, but what is the dog? As a literal matter, it’s not made of dog. I considered other bread-based foods. What is a sandwich? It’s two slices of bread with a filling that could be just about anything. Peanut butter & jelly is worlds apart from tuna salad, but they’re still both sandwiches. It’s the bread that matters most.
Perhaps — and here I felt I was really onto something — in New Iberia’s reckoning, a “dog” is something similar. Perhaps a “dog” is a type of food whose defining characteristic is the hot dog bun itself. There’s no other name for a hot dog bun, after all. (I double-checked.) Bunny, Wonder, Pepperidge Farm, King’s Hawaiian: Every brand on the shelf described their hot dog buns as “hot dog buns,” specifically.
The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that the “dog” in a New Iberian chili dog is the bread. Because hot dogs (the meat, not the finished product; see — this is confusing!) have all sorts of names: wieners and frankfurters and franks and so on. But hot dog buns are precisely one thing. Well, there you have it!
Reader, I regret to inform you that New Iberia chili dogs are not served on hot dog buns, but rather, use French bread. I gave up, lest I descended further into madness.
“It’s one of those stories that people keep rediscovering once a year. Hey, there’s a place called New Iberia, and they make chili dogs without the hot dog,” DJ Digital had told me. Ultimately, I came away with few answers about the New Iberian chili dog. Perhaps when the world discovers the story again next year, I’ll have better luck.
“I am not from New Iberia, so I may not have a dog in this fight, but I did grow up eating hot dogs, chili dogs or chili buns in Thibodaux. To be clear, a chili dog in Thibodaux is bun + hot dog + chili (no beans); and a chili bun is chili (still no beans) on a hot dog bun, and is dog-free. All three options are delicious, but the designation of dog or no dog is important information to have. —Ali Rouse Royster
