Hot Doug's

Hot Doug's is a restaurant in Chicago that has been featured on every local and national food show (and in fact when Nick was picking up the food the National Geographic Channel was filming a show). They are known for hot dogs and gourmet sausages. We have been to this restaurant a couple times before but Hot Doug's will be closing on October 4, 2014 so we wanted to go one last time before that time.

We love the fancy and interesting combinations at Hot Doug's and would have gone more often but they are located a bit far from us and they are only open from 10:30am to 4pm Monday through Saturday.  And to further complicate things they are cash only and always have a long line wrapped around the building.  Nick went on a weekday because a Saturday would have been crazy - and he still waited in line 1 1/2 hours.

Long line to get in

We ordered five sausages knowing that we would split them and we wanted to savor as many as possible this last time. Four of them were from the specials menu and one was from the regular menu.

From the weekly specials menu:
Baked ham sausage with prickly pear mustard, pineapple salsa and smoked Gouda cheese. This had a little more heat than we thought with the salsa. It was very complex, with a lot of tropical flavors but then the Gouda kind of throws it in a completely different direction.

Baked Ham Sausage with Pineapple

Bacon Cheeseburger Sausage with Coca-Cola BBQ Sauce, maple smoked cheddar cheese and smoked onion marmalade - this had a good smoky (from the onions) and sweet flavor (from the bbq sauce). It had more of a bacon flavor than cheeseburger flavor but we still enjoyed it.

BBQ Cheeseburger Sausage

Bison sausage

Game sausage of the week - Smoked bison Sausage with wild rice, Asiago cheese, bacon-garlic mayonnaise and corn relish. This was Nick's favorite of the bunch. He felt the smokiness and snap of the sausage were excellent and with the corn and Asiago it made him feel like he was eating at a five star restaurant.

Celebrity sausage - Basque-style smoked pork sausage with virtue cider mustard and Iberico cheese. This sausage didn't have as much going on with it just the sauce and the cheese but it had some interesting (Spanish) flavors.

Basque style smoked pork sausage

From the regular menu:
The George Mitterwald - Chicken sausage, zesty Santa Fe style - this was probably our least favorite, but it is really hard to compare to the fancier weekly specials which tend to have a bit more pizzazz to them. If we hadn't been eating this sausage in combination with everything else it would have been great.

Cheese fries plus sausages

Cheese Fries - Nick overheard people in line raving about the cheese fries so he ordered them.  They were okay but it is hard for any fries to impress Nick.  Hot Doug's does offer duck fat fries on Fridays and Saturdays and we were sad that we never went there on one of those days to try them because they are supposed to be great.

Final thoughts on Hot Doug's:
Food - we love the intricate and gourmet combinations that they come up with.  Natalie isn't a huge sausage person to begin with but she feels these are amazing. We are sad to see them close but there is another fancy sausage place in Lincoln Park (Frank N Dawgs) that will have to fill the void.

Chicken sausage 

Service - Once Nick got to the front of the line, Doug himself was at the counter like always.  He spends a lot of time with each person making sure they order what is best on each sausage.  Nick felt Doug may have been a little distracted on this day due to Nat Geo film crews filming.  After placing the order it only took a couple of minutes for the sausages to come out.

Doug himself

Atmosphere - it is a casual atmosphere inside with lots of sausage memorabilia and the bright colors of a classic hot dog cart.  It was a little chilly outside but good thing it was not too cold due to the long wait.  It may have been a slightly longer wait than normal for a weekday due to the film crew. But Nick was able to talk with the other patrons in line with him.