Hot Diggity Corn Dog Special

Hot Diggity's special for the month of September. Three corn dogs -each half of a Sabrett natural casing dog - topped with a Korean chili / condensed milk thing, honey dust, and a jalapeno / sour cream sauce.

I love all of Hot Diggity's specials, some of them are really inventive and next-level, but this might be my favorite in terms of less thinking and more eating.

One cool thing about corn dogs is that for whatever reason you don't have the same regional authenticity fanaticism that comes with standard hot dogs - nobody's going to come in and yell at you for making corn dogs wrong, or that you're destroying America by putting Korean sauce on something traditional. Maybe because corn dogs were (probably) invented / popularized at State Fairs, where crazier is better anyway.

Anyway, these things are DELICIOUS, go eat them now, and wash it down with some corn soda or new victorian lemonade, or bring a six pack and make shandies.. 

Hot Diggity

630 South Street 

Philadelphia

Lombardi's Specialty Hoagies

One of those famed South Philly hoagie shops that was written up way back when in the Inquirer but is far enough South of the "hipster barrier" that nobody writes about it, at least in the same way that Cosmi's and Chickie's have lines out the door. Closed the first two or three times I tried to go there, it was finally open the other day and this place is worth the wait. Definitely in my top 10 if not top 5.

Tribune and Centurion

Longhots on the side

Tribune with Salamincini

So their claim to fame is the "Salamincini" which is like a pepper shooter but instead of a cherry pepper, they stuff pepperoncini with salami wrapped provolone. Available by the pound or on a few of their hoagies including the Tribune which you can read some more about on my Serious Eats post.

Also delicious was the "Centurion" loaded with Dry Capacola, Sopressata and Coteghino.

Centurion

With Longhots

Another shot of the Tribune showing Salamancini cross section

Hoagie upskirt: real dry cured capicola

The menu also lists "hot frigadelles" which is just another term for italian frying peppers, aka cubanelles aka frigatello peppers, wider and milder than a longhot (or the "sweet" version which isn't hot at all). The only other place I've ever seen this wording on a menu is Little Nick's a few blocks away. 

Another place that uses real italian cured meats, but well balanced with juicier stuff like coteghino or "ham capacola" so you have a nice variety instead of a the chewy beef jerkey-esque salt bomb that happens when you have too many dry meats sliced too thick.

Lombardi's Specialty Hoagies

hours - Mon-Sat 8:30 - 4:00 (spotty hours, call first)

1226 Ritner St Philadelphia 

215 389 2220

Jerk Chicken from Gigi & Big R

All weekend I'd been working on this soul food cover for Philadelphia Weekly, drawing and looking at pictures of fried shrimp, wings, catfish, macaroni and cheese and various forms of chicken, and thinking a lot about Carribean food and fish hoagies, and realizing that there's a TON of soul food spots way out west and north that nobody ever writes about in all those "best fried chicken" articles.

So the other day I was in West Philly and thought I'd check out some food trucks, but it was late and everything was closed.. except for Gigi and Big R off on a dark side street near 30th street station. Super awesome jerk chicken, insanely flavorful but not crazy spicy.. dirty pile of rice & beans soaked through with jerk juice. Delicious.

There's a reason they beat out all the hipster trucks at the Vendy Awards and also these guys are open 7 days a week and LATE I think until 9 or maybe even 11?

Moe's Hot Dogs still Delicious

Stopped into Moe's for the first time in a while! This a 2-alarm Engine 47 (deep fried) with pepper hash and spicy mustard.

Always forget that they do deep fried hot dogs..definitely the way to go here since the other option is steamed. Yes they serve the dogs on big hoagie rolls which I'm not really into but willing to overlook since Moe's is otherwise awesome.

More Philly Sandwich Madness - Navy Yard Dinic's, Porky's Point and Bizini's Seafood Steaks and Hoagies.

The last (for now) in a series of crazy Philadelphia sandwich posts for Serious Eats, we did Hoagies and Cheesesteaks a couple weeks ago and this time it's Roast Pork, Cutlets, and all the rest. You can read the real thing on Serious Eats - this is basically just an excuse to post more pictures.



Starting off with the best - Dinic's in the Navy Yard made some of the most delicious sandwiches of the 40+ places we tried over the last couple of months. Not "the best" as in "I don't know what else to write" or "I'm saying it's better than everything else because it's really obscure" but actually THE BEST.


Hard to compare with John's Roast Pork or Nick's Roast Beef's Pork (also in the article) because the pork we had was pulled rather than sliced. Definitely better than Dinic's in the Reading Terminal and even Porky's Point that I want to be the best because it's so freaking cool.


Speaking of Porky's Point this place is incredible, I first went there last year with the amazing Rose Luardo to shoot some video of us eating pigs ears. The owner / manager was nice enough to hang out and tell us the history of the place, which in the 70's was a regular cheesesteak and roast pork stand in what was then an Italian neighborhood. When the area went Puerto Rican instead of getting bitter and racist they changed the menu.



The Roast Pork on the sandwich is the same they put on the classic PR platter with rice and beans and whatever else. Ask for the sandwich covered in "gravy" which is the slightly spicy red sauce they put on everything. It's terrific.


And seriously try some mofungo and pig's ears too... so good.


Another awesome find was Bizini's. If you read this blog often you're probably aware of my obsession with Fish Hoagies. I've been trying to find some really good ones and Bizini's is up there. Most I've had have been relatively small, flat filets but these were thick, dinner sized portions of perfectly fried, fresh flounder. Insane. If we do another one of these slideshows I'd love to do all fish hoagies.





Read more on Serious Eats.
Philadelphia: Roast Pork, Cutlets, Meatballs and More Sandwiches You Should Eat

Night Market Chinatown - Dueling Pizza Trucks and Hotdog Skewer

I missed the last couple of these things since the first one on Passyunk where everything was closed by the time I got there and ended up eating wings at the Adobe Cafe. Anyway Chinatown is an AWESOME location for the Night Market and it really felt like a real market and not just a foodie PR event. They should do this once a week.

nomad's margherita
margherita from pitruco
One highlight was definitely the dueling brick oven pizza trucks. I wrote up Pitruco for Daily Slice but Nomad was good too, although it's a bit of a bummer that their truck is not going to be a full time thing (sit down restaurant opening next year or whatever). After that were several startlingly weak bandwagon asian-fusion things made by white people that didn't taste like anything. Then pulled pork sandwich from Geechee Girl that was DELICIOUS.


One of the best bites came from the front of Solo, a Chinatown skewer bar a few blocks south of the whole thing that had giant speakers blasting Chinese dance music and a skewer grill set up out front surrounded by a bunch of drunk dudes downing bottles of Coors Light.


The "mini hot dog" skewer was one dollar and the dogs were scored into a crazy pattern and basted in some delicious salty sweet glaze. The lamb was super spicy and sort of fatty in a couple bites but what do you want for 2 bucks?


And of course no trip to Chinatown is complete without a visit to our favorite asian-fusion hotel / bus terminal / sports bar Tazia for shots of "Drunken Pineapple Longsex".

$5.00 Fish Hoagie

Somewhere in West Philly...


All the sights along the Cheesesteak Highway.. we're working on a Cheesesteak round-up similar to last week's Hoagie slideshow looking for fresh Cheesesteak magic all over the city....


Almost stopped at this one but we had already eaten 3 or 4 different cheesesteaks that day. Love the hand lettering and wish I had the time to stop at every place like this in the city.

Hoagie Madness

cumberland from slack's - boloney, ham, capicola, american cheese
For the past few weeks Caroline and myself plus a rotating cast of assistant eaters have been on a super intense hoagie tour working on this post for Serious Eats, not a "best of philly" but more like "a few of our favorites plus some we never tried before and heard were awesome and some unknown neighborhood spots we were saving for something like this".

Serious Eats - 10 Amazing Philadelphia Hoagies You Should Eat
"the avalanche" from juliano's deli
I'm sure the comments section will rage with angry Philadelphians "any list that doesn't include Big Joey's Hoagie Hut on Street road is total BS!" And honestly even though we ate a LOT of hoagies - more than twice what's on this list, a lot didn't make the cut - It still feels incomplete, especially because when get started with something like this people start telling you about all sorts of places, so there's at least 25 more legendary delis and hidden gems that should be on here.

And if you're wondering "where the hell is Johns Roast Pork you idiot" keep in mind there's two more of these coming, Cheesesteaks and Miscellaneous sandwiches which will probably be 99% roast pork and maybe a chicken cutlet. We're leaving banh mi, po-boys, and anything fancy for future articles.

italian from mike & matts - 12th & mifflin
It's probably too much detail for Serious Eats (or anywhere for that matter) but I feel like you could break Philadelphia Hoagies down into several sub-categories and have 5-10 great examples of each.

• Old Italian seeded - roll style
Cosmi's, Chickie's, P&S

• American Salad-Oil style
Slack's, Lee's, etc

• Italian / Jewish Deli Fusion
Koch's and every jewish deli that also makes hoagies

• Asian deli/grocery flower shop style
Delicious Bites, Jay's Deli, countless center city corner shops

• Norristown Zeps
Micro-regional variation, very different than a Hoagie

• In the cut
Fish hoagies, Gooey Louie's, Hoagie City..

rose's special sicilian from carmen's in bell mawr NJ
I definitely came out with a new favorite.. Carmen's, in JERSEY of all places, was the one that really blew my mind, combining the best of both worlds, meaning the legit italian meats that you would find in South Philly, but on a softer Del Buono roll similar to White House in Atlantic City.

koch's jewish tongue hoagie
The best EXPERIENCE had to be Koch's deli, that I can't believe more people don't talk about, we waited about 45 minutes for two hoagies, with the dude telling filthy jokes about "I give you my tongue" and giving us free samples the whole time, he literally plopped a mound of potato salad right into my hand (can I get a napkin?), along with tongue, brisket, corned beef, the whole time he's going on about how you can't get anything else like it Philly, his sandwiches are better than Katz's in New York, so on and so forth.

There was a group of people who I'm pretty sure were just there for the show, along with one really pissed off girl who kept saying "I'm just here for a sandwich" and muttered something about not eating red meat (why would you go there?!?!?!) And also, the sandwich was amazing.

Philadelphia Jewish Deli Dogs and Casino Deli

If you've been following my hot dog articles for the past couple years, you might be familiar with my fascination with Jewish Deli hot dogs, specifically the so-called, maybe-doesn't really exist "Kosher Tommy" - an all beef hot dog wrapped in beef salami (or beef bologna, at one place in Philly and a few in Baltimore -and sometimes cheese, yes I know it's not kosher ) that was/is supposedly a kosher/sort of kosher alternative to the "Texas Tommy" (bacon wrapped cheese filled dog).


The fascination goes back to the bizarre story of my Jewish / not Jewish family, especially my grandfather who was raised in Jewish family but abandoned religion in favor of art, yet whose eating habits were still very Northeast Philly Jewish style - whitefish salad, bagels, salami and eggs, and of course these mysterious hot dogs wrapped in salami.

I actually served my version of the "Kosher Tommy" at the Wienermobile event a couple weeks ago (baloney wrapped, and covered with cheese whiz for that philly twist) and most people loved it, although there was a guy who took offense and accused me of "making fun" of people who keep kosher, which was never my intent, and part of the reason for this article was to document the existence of this thing. My only guess to the popularity of cheese on a "kosher" style hot dog is that many Delis in the Philadelphia area also cater to a large non-Jewish or non-Kosher clientele.

Anyway I finally made the trek around the city and the burbs in search of this "Kosher Tommy" thing, and they were all really different, although EVERY jewish deli in the Philadelphia area seems to have some incarnation of a kosher hot dog topped with salami or pastrami or baloney and maybe cheese. My favorite was actually from Zeke's (pictured above), a small deli/diner in the city that I'd never noticed before - called the "Sizzle", a split & grilled dog wrapped in baloney and a pickle that I also jammed into the bun.

Check out my post on Serious Eats for all the dogs-
Hot Dog of the Week: A Tour of Philadelphia Deli Dogs


Another great find on this trip was the Casino Deli in Northeast Philadelphia. This place is like something from another world, a cross between a Jewish Deli and a takeout beer / lottery /grocery / cheesesteak joint.




The entire interior is covered in a massive Atlantic City mural complete with scenes of people rolling dice and various showbiz celebrities. The eccentric staff was awesome and the deli sandwiches terrific.


Pastrami dog was OK, too much bread with the giant roll but the pastrami was good. Great pickles and cheap cold beer. I'd love to come back here on a non-hot dog adventure.

Zeke's 5th Street Deli Bakery
zekes5thstreetdeli.com
318-20 South 5th Street; Philadelphia, PA 19106

Casino Deli
2425 Welsh Road; Philadelphia, PA 19114-2219