Gold Coast Dogs

Two years ago today, we were in Chicago, kicking off a day of sightseeing and family time with some Chicago-style hot dogs, so we're going to jump back into recapping some of the spots we visited back then. Since some spots (like this one) are repeats of places we went to but didn't recap on other trips, we're just going to combine them all together.

We lived in Chicago together for three years, and during that entire time, I never once had a Chicago-style hot dog (mostly because I wasn't eating much red meat back then). To remedy the situation, we decided to go on a hot dog crawl on one of our visits back to the city in 2012. We hit up Hot Doug's and a few other spots, trying lots of Chicago-style dogs. After trying a bunch of them, my favorite was Gold Coast Dogs, a decades-old Chicago mini-chain. It was so good that it even made my top 10 list that year, and that was a year of really tough competition.

The offering from Gold Coast Dogs consisted of a charred hot dog on a poppy seed bun topped with mustard, onions, tomatoes, pickles, neon green relish, sport peppers, and celery salt. While we had a lot of good ones on our crawl, this one just stood out for the freshness of the toppings, the snap of the dog, and the flavor of the charred hot dog. It was really satisfying. After that crawl, I really started to understand why people loved Chicago-style hot dogs so much. With all those toppings, they were much more exciting than your average hot dog.

Having had such a good experience at Gold Coast Dogs the first time, we were excited to return during our road trip back in 2015. On our way from our hotel to Millennium Park, we stopped by the same location in the Loop that we went to the last time and ordered a couple of char dogs. When we looked down at our tray, our first thought was, "Where did all the toppings go?" It felt like there was a lot less on the hot dog than on our other visit, and a quick comparison with the photo from a few years earlier showed a stark difference. The taste of the hot dog was fine, but it was definitely lacking in the toppings department. Since that's one of the best parts about eating a Chicago-style hot dog, we were really disappointed. We probably won't be returning to that location again. Instead, on our next visit, we may have to go on another hot dog crawl to find a new favorite!