The Best Hot Dog Is at the Ballpark — Really

The Chicago Cubs are the hot dog of the sports world: finished quick, terrible for you and impossible to quit. But baseball’s lovable losers are having a paradigm-shifting season–amazingly, anything short of a World Series would qualify as a disappointment this year–so it makes sense that they’ve joined forces with the greatest sausage purveyor in America: Hot Doug’s, Doug Sohn’s beloved gourmet “encased meat emporium,” which broke hearts all over Chicago when it closed in 2014.

Now Doug’s has chosen one of the most American of all places to be reborn: the boozy, sun-soaked bleachers of Wrigley Field. Instead of having to settle for the pale, anemic dogs that haunt most sporting events, bleacher bums will have exclusive access to Sohn’s plump masterpieces. The Joe Wallis, named for an obscure 1970s Cubs center fielder notorious for jumping from windows into hotel swimming pools, is a curry brat topped with dijonnaise, onions and smoked Gouda cheese. Sohn’s limited menu rotates–Wallis diehards may have to wait ’til next year–but it all tastes like something no one’s had at the Friendly Confines in 108 years: swagger.

Ruby is the dining critic for Chicago magazine