Ooh, Snap! New York Is Getting Chicago-Style Wieners on Wheels

"The Chicago-style hot dog," Zeph Courtney says, "is a classic piece of American food culture. It's a very, very specific thing. There's one way to do it right, and every other way is wrong."

"And we're going to do it right," adds Liz Schroeter Courtney.

Liz is Zeph's wife. She's also his business partner in Snap, a food truck that will soon add Chicago-style hot dogs to New York's ever-expanding menu of ambulatory dining options. Snap is scheduled to have its soft launch this Saturday at a Flavorpill event, and will subsequently park itself at spots throughout the city. None of those spots, incidentally, will be on the street, at least for now: Given the difficulties of getting an expensive black-market vending permit, the Courtneys have been developing partnerships with private properties and event spaces -- among their planned venues is the backyard of a bar they prefer not to name.

The couple has spent two years doing research and writing a business plan for Snap, whose origins can be found in Liz's longing for the hot dogs she grew up with in Chicago. "It's hard to find a good Chicago-style hot dog here," she says. "I had the idea that I could bring this to the city, but it wasn't until Zeph and I got together that we realized this is something we can do."

Although the dogs will be the star of Snap's menu, the truck will also offer a cheeseburger, a hamburger, and fries, as well as some specials. All of the meat will be cooked on a charbroiler, and will come from Dickson's Farmstand Meats. The specials may include a riff on a banh mi called a brat mi -- think bratwurst instead of roast pork -- and a Danish-style hot dog, which Zeph describes as "basically a hot dog on a bun with spicy beer mustard and onion and bread and butter pickles." The Courtneys plan to ask customers to submit their suggestions, though Zeph takes pains to emphasize that, however idiosyncratic their specials may be, they "plan on building a reputation with authenticity, not trends."

That said, they're aware that some of their choices may put a few knickers in a knot. "You may have people from Chicago that argue we're not traditional because we're not using Vienna beef hot dogs," Liz acknowledges. "But we're interested in using food that's not traveling across the country."

"Vienna beef hot dogs don't taste as good as other all-beef hot dogs," Zeph adds.

For the uninitiated, a proper Chicago-style dog has very specific components. "It has to be an all-beef hot dog in natural casing in a poppy-seed bun and topped with mustard, chopped onions, tomato wedges, a dill pickle spear, sweet relish, and sport peppers," Liz explains. "And you finish it off with a dash of celery salt."