Once Upon a Hot Dog
Posted by estiator at 10 May, at 05 : 28 AM Print
How the Greeks of the Northeast shaped an American fast food classic.
By Constantine Kolitsas
“BaseBall, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet.” That was the jingle from an iconic 1970s commercial; iconic, of course, because it rang so true. Although the bunned sausage was most likely a German import from the city of Frankfurt, the hot dog (or frankfurter, or wiener, or weenie, or frank, or red hot) is as integral a part of Americana as, well, baseball and apple pie.
But as I look back at my childhood, and survey the landscape around me, there is a Greek thread woven into the fabric of one of America’s favorite fast foods, particularly in the Northeast.
“My grandfather was driving his truck one day, and he got a flat tire in front of Forbes Field in Pittsburgh,” my mother, now 87 years old, tells me. “So he pulled over, removed the three remaining wheels, put the truck up on blocks, and sold hot dogs from the truck.” Anastasios “Ernie” Stavrianidis, a widower who came to the United States 100 years ago from Turkey with a mother-in-law and four small daughters in tow (as his city, Smyrna, went up in flames), would go on to be a city legend, selling hot dogs (and shots of his moonshine during Prohibition) to world-famous athletes and rodeo stars.
According to my mother, as a toddler she would sit on the laps of Babe Ruth, Roy Rogers, and scores of other famous athletes, all coming across the street for her papou’s hot dogs and whiskey (and hanging around to play illicit card games as well, but that’s another story for another magazine).
As a new immigrant to the United States, one of my father’s early jobs was as a short-order cook at Fall’s View Grille in Paterson, New Jersey, in the mid ’50s. The place sold just four items: hamburgers, French fries, soda pop, and Texas hot wieners. “It was the busiest place in Paterson,” my father recalls. “I worked there with my friend Nick Amoratis, another Andriote. It was owned by a Greek, I don’t remember his name,” my father tells me. “There were seven of us on the line, and we didn’t stop from the time the restaurant opened to the time it closed, it was so busy. The Greek who owned it made millions.”
“That was the best business I ever worked in,” he laments, despite becoming one of the most respected chefs in Connecticut.
Indeed, hot dog fortunes were to be made by many Greeks throughout the Northeast.
As for the Texas hot wieners at Fall’s View Grille, that particular variation of a hot dog with its unique condiments was a very Greek innovation.
According to the Library of Congress, the Texas hot wiener (or “hot Texas wiener”) “was invented around 1924 by “an old Greek gentleman” who owned a hot dog stand. The unnamed creator drew upon his native country’s culinary heritage to create his version of chili, which was based on the Greek ground beef sauce served with spaghetti (“makaronia me kima”). He most likely named his sauce for America’s largest state as a stroke of marketing genius. Along with this unique “chili” recipe, the people at Fall’s View added chopped fresh onion and mustard, the trio of condiments that still characterize a Texas hot wiener.
Through the decades, the Fall’s View Grille expanded into nearby towns, was shuttered in the ’80s, and then resurrected by new owners. But the Texas hot wiener story is still alive and well and thriving about 90 miles north, in the city of Danbury, Connecticut, where the fourth generation of the Koukos family continues to sell that exact combination of ingredients.
Known as JK’s since 1974, the restaurant was founded 50 years earlier, in 1924, as Texas Hot Wieners by brothers George and Peter Koukos, two immigrants from the Epirus region of Greece. Family lore says that the brothers were the creators of the chili recipe.
Today’s George Koukos, grandson of the founder, operates the business along with his brother, Peter, and his son, John.
“The chili recipe is the same one that was used in 1924,” he says, recalling how he would help his grandmother make it at her home in one of the city’s middle-class neighborhoods when he was in his teens. His father, John, was running the business at the time, although the chili was still being made by the founder’s wife, Aphrodite (or “Yiayia Koukos” as she was affectionately known among the Danbury Greeks).
“I would stay with her a few nights a week to help her as she got older,” says George. Her husband had predeceased her by seven years, and he would go to help her make the sauce and sleep over as the sauce slow-cooked through the night.
The restaurant moved through two locations before finding its current home, nestled at the heart of the city near Danbury’s largest park and one of its middle schools. And while the restaurant menu grew when it took on that last location, the center of attention remains the Texas hot wiener, still cooked on a flat top grill and smothered with Yiayia Koukos’s chili, freshly cut white onions, and mustard.
Ownership of the restaurant has stayed in the family throughout the eatery’s 98-year existence. The first George Koukos took it over completely when his brother and co-founder, Peter, passed away. At that time, George brought in his son, John, to help him with the business, which he did until he left to fight in the Second World War, serving in North Africa and Europe for five years. Upon his homecoming, he returned to the restaurant and ran it with his father and, eventually, his wife Mary.
“I’ve worked 12-hour days from the time I was 10 years old,” says the current George Koukos. Along with his brother, named Peter for his grandfather’s brother, George has run the business for decades.
“I left college to help my father with the business,” says George, indicating that it had gotten so big that his father needed more hands to run it. Today, George’s son, John, is the fourth generation of Koukos men (and the second John Koukos) to step into the business.
While Danbury is home to JK’s Texas Hot Wieners, it’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the state’s Greek hot dog history.
If Connecticut is known for three foods, those are coal-fired pizza, lobster rolls, and hot dogs.
Capitol Lunch in New Britain, just a short ride from the state capital of Hartford, was established in 1929 and serves the same trio of condiments on its hot dogs as that found at JK’s. Founded by the Unaris family, lore has it that the dogs were given to customers at a shoeshine shop to attract customers. The hot dogs, topped with “Greek meat sauce,” quickly became legend, with stories of “Cappie dogs” traded by servicemen in the trenches.
Heading away from the center of Connecticut and moving toward its coastal towns along the Long Island Sound, there are more stories of Greek hot dog tycoons.
In Newtown, Connecticut, one of the state’s most picturesque New England towns, there was a Greek who made his fortunes selling foot-long hot dogs from a roadside stand on the Route 25 through fare. Although the family of Milton Halas has long departed the hot dog business, his footprint is still felt.
“My father worked for Milton Halas at one of his restaurants, and that’s where he got his start, as did many of the Greek immigrants at the time,” says Nick Vlamis, who, with his brother, Gus, owns and operates Tomlinson’s, another storied Connecticut hot doggery, located in the city of Bridgeport. “And it was Milton who told my father about this place.”
According to Nick and Gus, their father, Platon Vlamis, purchased a small stand from the estate of Harry Tomlinson in 1948. Harry had started the business a decade or so earlier, but burned through cash and died in debt. Platon convinced the heirs to sell it to him, spending all of his money to do so.
“The building was pretty much just a kitchen with a window,” says Nick. “There was no bathroom, no heat, and no air conditioning, but there was a garage on the edge of the property. That’s where our father lived in the beginning. And that also had no heat!”
But Platon had quick success with the business and ran the restaurant for 10 years until, in 1958, he brought in a young man, Jimmy Kaklamanos, to help, giving him a percentage of the profits. Platon went to Greece that year and returned a married man, with wife in tow. Four years later, Platon and his young family (Nick and Gus were born in those years) moved back to Greece, at which point he leased the business to Kaklamanos. When the boys grew older, the family returned to the United States, and in 1982 Kaklamanos told Platon he would not renew the lease, which brought the Vlamis family back into the hot dog business. Gus stepped in and ran the business with his father while Nick pursued an engineering degree and, subsequently, career. A few years later, Nick would take a leave of absence from his job to help his father and brother; a leave which, nearly four decades later, is still in effect.
Platon passed away in 1986, and the brothers have operated Tomlinson’s ever since. In November 1999, they realized a vision of building a new construction on the same lot as the original stand.
“We closed for just 45 minutes,” says Nick of the transition from stand to full restaurant with drive-thru window; just enough time to roll a deep fryer filled with hot oil from one kitchen to the other, he jokes.
As with JK’s in Danbury, the current Tomlinson’s has a large menu, but it’s still the hot dogs that bring the restaurant its fame. In a recent online contest run by the Connecticut Post media outlet, Tomlinson’s won the “Top Dog” prize with its chili cheese dog with bacon and cooked onions.
Jimmy Kaklamanos went on to open his own hot dog restaurant in nearby Milford, Connecticut. Originally known as The Greeks, the restaurant was sold to his goddaughter and her sister and cousin (and their spouses). The three, Effie Kolitsas, Eleni Filippides, and Nikos Vlastaris, rebranded the restaurant to Goodies and have since opened two more locations, serving hot dogs (the original is with mustard, relish, and bacon bits) as well as fried seafood, burgers, shakes, and breakfast sandwiches (among others).
And as such, the story of Greeks and hot dogs, then, is still being written.
