RECREATION: Top Dog

The spiritual home of the U.S. hot dog —and the world’s largest hot dog stand—is Nathan’s Famous on Brooklyn’s Coney Island. To Nathan’s gaudy green and white stands each summer flock many of the millions of visitors to Coney, gobbling up more than 200,000 hot dogs (at 20¢ each) on a weekend. Summer or winter, Nathan’s never closes. Its customers have braved blizzards just to reach a Nathan’s hot dog: it is a regular last stop for many early-morning survivors of Manhattan’s cafe society. In all, Nathan’s Famous sells more than 8,000,000 hot dogs a year. This week, with business running 10% above last year, it let bids for construction of a new $350,000 wing that will almost double its counter space.

Approved by “Doctors.” Almost everybody who is anybody in New York gets to Nathan’s. Nelson Rockefeller showed up there while campaigning for Governor and blurted, in unsolicited testimonial: “No one can hope to be elected in this state without being photographed eating a hot dog at Nathan’s Famous.” Among others who have put in dutiful appearances are former Governor Averell Harriman, New York City’s Mayor Robert Wagner and New York’s former Senator Herbert Lehman. The show biz set also flocks to Nathan’s, including Frequent Customers Jerry Lewis. Danny Kaye, Eddie Fisher, Shelley Winters, Eva and Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Nathan’s boss and founder is tiny, tanned Nathan Handwerker, 68, who came to the U.S. from Poland in 1912 and four years later opened his own hot dog stand on Coney Island with a $300 stake. When suspicious customers wondered how he sold hot dogs for 5¢ (v. the standard 10¢ price), Handwerker used a trick that some TV advertisers tried 20 years later. He hired students, had them clean up and dress in white jackets to look like doctors. Then they stood around eating Nathan’s hot dogs in full view of passersby.

Paprika & Snap. Ever since a new subway brought the big crowds to Coney Island in 1920, Nathan’s has been a moneymaker; last year it grossed more than $3,000,000. Under prodding from his two sons, Nathan has reluctantly expanded into a Long Island restaurant and a catering service. He has also diversified his fare, now sells 4,500 lbs. of shrimp and 1,400 lbs. of frogs’ legs each summer weekend. Although businessmen often offer to back him in a nationwide chain, Nathan always refuses. “I won’t have my, name over the door,” he says, “unless I can be there myself to keep an eye on the grill.”

Nathan arrives at work by 4 a.m. every summer day to taste each batch of raw hot dogs. His formula: garlic, paprika and top-grade steer meat so lean that it will not pop the hot dog open when it is grilled — all encased in sheep membrane to give the dog just the right snap when bitten. When an upstate member of the New York state senate once derided a bill as being “as old and wrinkled as a warmed-over Coney Island hot dog,” Nathan’s indignantly fired off a batch of hot dogs to the state capital. The offending senator ate one and asked to have his remark stricken from the record.