This is not okay.
It’s time once again to get sad with the culinary exploits of British stadium food. This time it’s Manchester United and a hot dog. How badly can you screw up a hot dog… right?
Barely peaking out from inside its cremated bread tomb is a shy sausage wishing to have a fleeting glimpse of sunlight before it’s devoured — but that is not to be. This is the perfect example of taking a food which is totally fine, and ruining it by trying to get fancy. However, as bizarre as it is to put a hot dog in a baguette, it’s the lack of care at every single step that elevates this into the surreal.
I’m operating off the assumption that this is not some deeply malted, complex whole wheat loaf — because we’re talking about a soccer stadium. I have to believe this is a standard, white, French baguette which has been overtoasted to the point of oblivion. I don’t mean to go all Paul Hollywood on this, but you can tell from the structure that it’s been overbaked, dried out, and turned into dust.
That’s before we talk about the utterly absurd bread-to-sausage ratio we’re working with here. The entire purpose of the hot dog, like any good sandwich, is balance. You need to ensure the bread and meat work in concert for a total experience. If you want to eat bread, eat bread — don’t put a small hot dog 1/8th the side of its housing inside a baguette and say “yes, this is a completed dish,” and especially don’t do it when it looks like the baguette was torn open by a raccoon.
As far as I’m concerned the hot dog is a North American food. No, I don’t need some lecture about how the 7th Earl of Frankfurt created the dish in 1687. Hot dogs are American. The world can have claim to the infinitely superior sausage varietals (of which there are many) but putting homogenized, emulsified meat slurry into a case and then wrapping that in bread is an inherently American dish in the 21st century.
I say this because the Glazers, who own Manchester United, ARE FROM ROCHESTER, NEW YORK! You were born a stone’s throw from the culinary capital of the hot dog world, and yet this is your excuse for a cultural exchange? I don’t even have a proper analogy for how sad it is to do this. It would be like Napoli deciding to put more native food in its stadium, so it sold the rights to a Sbarro. Still, I don’t even think that’s as offensive as the Manchester United dog.
I am a simple man who doesn’t ask a lot from this world. When it comes to hot dogs all I’m looking for is a soft bun, a natural casing, some yellow mustard — and if I’m feeling fancy, a little sauerkraut. That’s it. Simple, honest, perfection. Instead Manchester United embraced its red devil roots and gave us a hot dog that looks like it was cooked by Satan himself.
