While staying in Cleveland in July, we were sitting in our hotel room watching Food Network (because we’re a bunch of lardo’s) when a commercial came on for “Best Thing I Ever Ate.” We were about to turn off the tv and walk out the door, when Michael Symon came on and said the best thing he ever ate was a hot dog from Happy Dog in Cleveland. Sean and I immediately looked at each other as a plan quickly formed in our brains.
We have lots of ideas. Not a lot of “good” ideas, though.
The space is very divey. You can tell this is more of a place to go at night (they have a stage setup for live music), so it looked kind of empty in the daylight. When you sit down, there are long, thin sheets of paper with all the toppings and sauces you can get on your hot dog. Their housemade quarter pound hot dog costs $5, but you get unlimited toppings, so I think that totally makes up for it. When you flip the paper over, you have a choice between fries and tater tots, and the list of all the toppings you can get on those. Basically it was my dream restaurant.
So. Many. Delicious. Choices.
I was a little overwhelmed at first, because there are so many choices. I ended up ordering my hot dog with pimento mac and cheese (of course), bleu cheese coleslaw, caramelized onions, bacon, and roasted garlic aioli. I was a little worried that it was going to be too many flavors for one hot dog, but the chef managed to balance the distribution of everything really well. I loved it.
There’s macaroni and cheese on my hot dog. Did I mention that this is my dream restaurant??
I stayed pretty basic with my tater tots (because you know I love me some tater tots) and just got them with nacho cheese sauce and bacon.
Sorry for the poor quality. I was trying to eat and take pictures at the same time.
Ben was brave and ordered the Michael Symon “Best Thing I Ever Ate” dog which has alien relish, chunky peanut butter, and sriracha hot sauce. As weird as it sounds, it was actually delicious. The peanut butter was not sweet at all, so it really complemented the other flavors of the dog.
Ben is slightly better at eating and taking pictures at the same time.
Ben, longing for his homeland, also got the “poutine” fries, which are fries topped with bacon, feta cheese, and beef gravy. Though it wasn’t authentic Canadian poutine, it was still pretty darn good, so no complaints here.
I could eat like 3 of those right now.
Sean built his own dog and topped it with bourbon baked beens, pimento mac and cheese, and bacon spiked southern style greens. It was very much a southern hot dog. The bite I had was delish. He also got fries, but kept them pretty basic with cheese and bacon.
I promise there’s a hot dog under all that macaroni
Christine got a very Christine hot dog, topped with cucumbers, caramelized onions, and brazilian chimichurri.
Christine is kind of strange. But I love her anyway. Or maybe because of that. I’m not sure.
The one thing I thought was kind of weird was that instead of putting the sauces onto your hot dog, they brought them all out at once on a tray, so you can put it on yourself depending on how much you want. So we ended up getting 4 people’s worth of sauces brought out at once, without any idea which sauce belonged to which person (especially since we all had short term memory loss and forgot which sauces we all ordered once they took our papers away).
Saucepacalypse!
They also have a ton of beers on tap, including a few that they brew in-house. We got a pint of the chocolate peanut butter cup porter, and it was really yummy.
Mac and cheese hot dogs?Peanut butter cup beer? This place is heaven.
All in all I really enjoyed this place and would totally go back again next time I’m in Cleveland. Thanks for the recommendation, Mr. Symon!
I definitely left happy.
Happy Dog
5801 Detroit Ave
Cleveland, OH 44102
(216) 651-9474
MY HOT DOG WAS DELISH. DON’T JUDGE ME.