coney island moon

Nathan’s Famous is a Coney Island institution. It has been selling hot dogs since 1916, and it also holds the Fourth of July hot dog eating contest, when we celebrate America by watching small Japanese men set hot dog eating records. What then, is Nathan’s Famous doing in the Lenox Mall Food Court?

Lest anyone has forgotten, today I resumed the Great Food Court Project, or my attempt to eat at every restaurant in the mall food court that is a short walk from my office. Today I was in the mood for hot dogs.

I honestly don’t remember Nathan’s presence in the food court from my earlier stint in Atlanta, and I thought it was exclusively in Coney Island and in the New York New York casino in Las Vegas. But a quick glimpse at the Nathan’s website showed me how wrong I was---this restaurant is everywhere! There are numerous outposts in Tokyo, which I guess is how the Japanese practice for world domination, and weirdly, Kuwait. Also, it’s possible that Nathan’s might be trying to take over the world; they’ve bought Kenny Rogers Roasters and a sub company and a fish company. Let’s keep an eye on this, people.

Anyways, the Nathan’s in Lenox has possibly the world’s worst placed menu, which requires kind of leaning in to the restaurant to see what they have…this might be the reason that not many people were ordering from there. Or it might be the social bias that exists against hot dogs in our culture. Either one. Because of the weirdly placed menu, I can’t report on everything they offered, but let’s just say I saw a little menu item known as “hot dog nuggets.”

I settled on a chili cheese hot dog, a hot dog with sautéed onions and an order of fries. I preferred the hot dog with sautéed onions to the chili cheese dog, even though I lost some onions down the front of my shirt when I took a bite. They sauté those onions in magic. The fries were great---they are gigantic crinkle cut fries that were bigger than my fingers.

While I ate, I tried to read the little info sheet that lines the trays (it was a little tricky to read with the gobs of chili cheese that fell onto it). What I learned is that nine U.S. presidents have eaten Nathan’s, and that when King George and Queen Elizabeth came to visit America, FDR served them Nathan’s.

Nathan’s got its start when a guy named Nathan fell in love with this girl named Ida at this hot dog place they were working. They decided to start their own hot dog stand and sold hot dogs for a nickel and the rest is history from what it sounds like.

I thoroughly enjoyed my meal, but I will say that a lunch of hot dogs makes it a little hard to go back and work for a few more hours. Even on the short walk back to the office I felt like I was going to die. Hot dog juice was oozing through my pores.