In the part of Australia that I lived in for most of my life we had very few "festivals" as such. What we did have, though, was the Royal Show. Every year the Royal Show tours Australia, stopping at untold amounts of places along the way. One of, if not the, most common foods at the Royal Show was the Dagwood Dog, also known as the Pluto Pup. Essentially just a hot dog on a stick, dipped in batter then deep-fried, this is an absolute thing of beauty. More

It's fitting that Cleveland's signature dish is the Polish Boy: a grilled kielbasa on a hefty roll topped with cole slaw, a pile of french fries, and lubricated with generous amounts of barbecue and/or hot sauce. It's a perfect representation of a city with a long history of Eastern European sausage-making and Southern-style barbecue, with a touch of Chicago thrown in for good measure (the "fries on the dog" style are reminiscent of Chicago's minimalist "depression dog" joints). More

New Jersey-based indie band Big Troubles has a pretty sweet music video of them cruising around in their car, stopping at some of their homestate's finest roadside joints: White Manna for sliders, Pizza Town USA for slices, Van Dyke for ice cream, and even Rutt's Hut for hot dogs which we, coincidentally enough, just featured on the site last Friday! Basically it's four dudes gorging themselves for three minutes to a foot-tapping beat. More

Another legendary hot dog mecca that has been on my list for way too long: Rutt's Hut. Featured in countless articles and television shows, it's been around since 1928. A ramshackle cluster of brick and wood buildings in the middle of nowhere along an industrial stretch of a small North Jersey highway, it may be off-putting to some, but to me it's a sign of the real thing. More

With the possible exception of the Knife Sharpening Demo, this is quite possibly the most important knife skill to learn in the kitchen. Sure, you could always buy special tools to convert your everyday hot dog into a whimsical cephalopod, and undoubtedly, it's an item you'd use every day. But why pay $16 for something you can do for free? In this video, you'll not only learn how to perform the standard frankfurter-to-mollusk conversion, you'll also learn how to give your wiener much more celestial goals by transforming them into fantastical star-shaped crispy nuggets. More

The Dapper Dog cart comes out for lunch a few days a week, and every Friday and Saturday night on the bar-choked corner of 2nd and Poplar Street in the city's Northern Liberties section of Philly. The menu is total drunk food, the kind of thing I might try to make at home after 12 beers and maybe a funny-tasting cigarette: hot dogs topped with pepperoni, tomato sauce, asparagus, mac and cheese, fried eggs. They also do all sorts of specials, such as the mashed potato dog above or a "Greek hot dog" which is basically the contents of a Greek salad piled onto a hot dog. More

The Dog House is a tiny shack on Route 66 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that's been serving up burgers, chili cheese tater tots, hot coffee and their signature foot-long hot dogs to truckers, locals and tourists alike for at least 60 years. The food is fast and cheap, and you know you're in New Mexico when the chili comes with a choice of "green or red." More

It's time for another street food profile. This time we meet a cart that's selling unique Chicago foods like their hot dogs, Polish sausage, Italian beef, and Italian sausage to the Northern Virginia/DC metro area. More

The New Jersey Italian hot dog has been haunting me since starting this Hot Dog of the Week column a little more than a year ago. I've been dying to try one and finally made it to North Jersey to do so. Honestly I was a bit worried that this holy grail of hot dogs wouldn't live up to the hype. I had the opportunity recently to stop at Joe Joe's Italian Hot Dogs in Toms River, one of the few places in central or south Jersey serving an authentic New Jersey Italian hot dog, the other being Jersey Dogs near Fort Dix. My mind has officially been blown. More

Ah, hot dogs. Meat tubes bursting with stars-and-stripes patriotism and, when they're good, a poppy snap with salty-garlicky-beefy juiciness. Even if you're not a "hot dog person" they just taste better on the Fourth. We went grocery shopping for the most nationally-available brands of all-beef franks, both skinless and with natural casing. Check out the results. More