You'll Never Guess What Jacques Pépin Puts on His Hot Dogs

We’ve all got opinions about hot dogs. New York dogs or Chicago-style? Steamed or grilled? Mustard or ketchup? Should you score it? Toast the bun or not?  

But here’s the thing: There’s no wrong way to hot dog. How you make and top a frankfurter is entirely up to you. (This is a judgment-free zone!) With that said, we encourage you to consider the hot dog as a canvas for more cooking techniques, buns, condiments, and accompaniments than you might imagine. Once you experiment beyond the basic (yet satisfying) schmears of ketchup and mustard, you can begin to build your ultimate hot dog.

We asked four of our favorite chefs how they like their hot dogs. Read on — perhaps they’ll inspire the flawless frank for you.

The Evelyn Garcia Dog

“My favorite dogs are Mexican-style,” says chef Evelyn Garcia of Houston's Jūn restaurant. “I fondly remember enjoying them in the town center of my mother’s hometown of Valle Hermoso, Tamaulipas, when we would spend summers with our grandparents.” Now, when she makes them at home, Garcia wraps her hot dogs in bacon and sears them on a plancha until they’re nice and crispy. She puts them in a toasted fluffy bun (her favorite brands are Bimbo and Mrs. Baird’s) and tops them with mayonnaise, mustard, and freshly diced tomatoes and white onions. “The mayo is there to add a little richness, mustard has that acid to cut through the fattiness, and the tomato and onion add freshness.” And for that extra kick, Garcia always has a grilled jalapeño on the side.

The Danny Meyer Dog

As restaurateur Danny Meyer grew up, his hot dog preferences did as well. The founder of Union Square Hospitality Group and Shake Shack devoured ballpark-style dogs at St. Louis Cardinals games, patterned with one-inch lines of mustard, ketchup, relish, hot peppers, and chopped onions for a different bite each time. As a teenager, he’d split his dogs lengthwise, stuff them with cubes of American cheese, and wrap them with bacon. “What I didn’t know then was that all my years of obsessing over hot dogs would lead me to open a small hot dog stand in Madison Square Park, which would later evolve into Shake Shack,” says Meyer. “But recently, I discovered something a bit more elevated…caviar.” At The Modern in New York City, Meyer serves housemade mini wagyu dogs on a poppyseed bun garnished with pickled shallots, mustard sabayon, dill oil, and a spoonful of caviar.

The Carla Hall Dog

“My last meal would be between a hamburger or a hot dog,” says chef Carla Hall. “I don’t want anything fancy.” Although Hall’s preferred toppings are anything but “fancy,” the detail to which she considers getting the perfect, evenly distributed bite is unexpectedly sophisticated. It starts with two hefty, quarter-pound, all-beef dogs (preferably from Chicago-based butchery Happy to Meat You) that are griddled on a cast iron grill pan to give them distinct char marks. The dogs are placed inside lightly toasted buns that have been split from the side, not the top — an essential detail for Hall. “You can’t get as many toppings on when it’s on top,” she says. She carefully adorns the hot dogs with Heinz ketchup and French’s yellow mustard, then gives them each a 360-degree turn, smearing every inch of the buns’ interiors with sauce. She adds a bit more ketchup and mustard, followed by crunchy and sour toppings: “One gets sweet relish and onions, and the other gets sauerkraut and onions,” she says. “Why say ‘or’ when you can say ‘and’?”

The Jacques Pépin Dog

Jacques Pépin’s hot dog preferences are ever-changing. Sometimes they’re scored and pan-fried, and sometimes they’re charred to oblivion over a fire. But these days, his go-to hot dog is poached, “so that it is nice, plump, and juicy,” he says. The hot dog goes inside a griddled, toasty bun and is topped with ketchup and a crunchy kimchi made with mustard greens and daylily — an even balance of spicy and sweet. “There you have it,” Pépin says. “A perfect hot dog for me.”