Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Your first mistake is mayo on a hot dog. Yucky.

If it's a kosher hot dog I think mayo is kind of sacreligious. Anyway, for me it's a Burger King Whopper.

White Castle 20 pack sack (20 burgers with 4 fries) with an order of mozzarella sticks, an order or onion chips & an order of chicken rings.

Too much salt, too much fat, too much over processed food, deep fried & greasy....there's no logical reason to eat it....but...about every 6 months or so we get the whim, have a lapse in juudgement & decide on a bad food pig fest.

Sometimes we even get 1/2 & 1/2 jalepeno burgers!

While mayo on a hotdog is certainly not my choice, mayo (especially pasteurized/additive kinds that we buy in the store) do not spoil. Mayo food poisoning is a myth. Mayo may be kept safely at room temperature. It is refrigerated for quality purposes rather than food safety.

The trouble comes from the food mayo is mixed with spoiling, or food particles inadvertently put into the mayo by using a soiled utensil to get the mayo out of the jar.

That being said, my jar of Dukes is in the fridge where it belongs.

Feast Food. You know what I mean. When they block off the street and those carts with games of chance, rides and food all convene. For a week or so, it's a party; sometimes in the name of a saint.

I'm thinking specifically of those sausage and pepper heroes served by a cousinette with long, unrestrained hair and painted nails that go directly into the jar of peppers which get spread on your sandwich. (Thank God the brine has vinegar!)

Zeppoles also come to mind from the same type of feasts - I saw a young kid stirring a big bowl of batter with a long paddle - as he sweated into it. It took me a long time to get over that image!

Hey don't knock it 'til you've tried it. Mayo on burgers, fries, and street dogs (all beef) is delicious.

Plus, I didn't need to be scolded - the whole point is that I KNOW it's a lapse in judgment. :)

Lex, don't worry about the mayo in the heat as long as it's commercial mayo -- which it surely is at a cart! As pointed out before, it really does not spoil easily, primarily because it is pasteurized and acidic enough from vinegar and lemon juice. Do be worried, however, about any "contaminants" that the vendor may have gotten into the mayo (bits of onion, cheese, hot dog), as THOSE are what will usually spoil.

As far as worthwhile lapses... every so often, I give in to my cravings and decide, against my better judgment, to eat something that I know from experience will cause an IBS flare-up. It always ends up being somewhat regrettable. But it's almost always worth the suffering!

Hubby's favorite lapse is to eat hot dogs off carts in virtually every place we've ever visited in the world. Some of those places are not exactly known for hot dogs, and many are places where you definitely should NOT be eating ANYTHING off street carts. But, it's a bit of a tradition. I'm pretty daring, but on this one, I choose to just watch.

Well, the first one that comes to mind was in Russia... the lady running the cart looked like an old fairy-tale witch. She had about three teeth in her old wizened face, wild grey hair, a ratty sweater over a rattier housedress with old-fashioned boots, and just looked generally pretty rough.

We later found out she was only about 55. She had learned to *speak English* in grade 3 when she lived in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. She turned out to be such a sweetheart, trying to remember the tiny bit of English she'd learned at age 8. We all ended up laughing and having a lot of fun trying to speak to each other with our pathetic 10 words of Russian, her slightly better English, and lots of sign language and pantomimes.

Ultimately, we had no doubts that her hot dogs were perfect! I think he ate two! I don't think they were even a dollar each -- I know he purposely overpaid because we couldn't imagine how she could possibly make a living from that cart in an expensive city like St. Petersburg.

There have probably been much sketchier ones -- tiny jungle towns in Mexico and Java come to mind -- but that one in Russia is always the one I remember best.

Next year, he'll be trying them off street vendors in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, sssoooo... I'll have to get back to you on that!

@LoCo - That's often the way it works out isn't it? It's always the sorta scary, possibly a bad idea place that ends up surprising you. Thanks for sharing your story. Sounds like you've had more than a few adventures. :)

i can't resist the churro guy on the L train platform at 14th street and sixth avenue. three for a buck and they are sinfully greasy, crunchy, and
sweet.

i would never order a hot dog from a street vendor but i can also never pass the taco truck on 96th and broadway without getting two goat meat tacos.

interesting about liking mayo on your dogs. just last night i was reading john thorne's newest book and he was talking about how hard it used to be to convince people to serve mayo on his burgers.

streetfood in india- roadside dosas, grilled sandwiches, or chaat- pav bhaji, pani puri. all this food tastes so much better from the road but you're almost guaranteed a case of "dehli belly."

I'm always tempted by Italian sausages with peppers & onions - at a fair, near Fenway park or in the North End at the feasts. That smell is so good! I always ask for the one that has been cooking the longest.

"Maximum bang for your buck" (or shekel, in this case) reminds me of the felafel carts in Israel that look almost like salad bars, there are so many condiments. But gorgeous to look at....

Loco and lexophile, the worst and most frightening street cars I encountered--especially in the hot dog/sausage genre--were in London. They are famously unconcerned with hygiene and have been videotaped retrieving and serving sausage from the ground (ie., street).

My husband does the mayo with hot dog thing. I blame it on his Frenchness. To me, it's just not tasty enough to stand up to the dog, and too much fattiness on fattiness. I do like it with french fries and burgers.

Anyway, my lapse in judgment is the Chinese buffet. We were lucky enough to have a fantastic place when I was in school, but the rest are crap, Still, I have to go sometimes, just to get a couple of bites of everything and simultaneously get the sweet and sour pork, Gen Tso's chicken, fried rice, etc. cravings out of my system.

And by the way...

Toasts with mayo, instead of butter are the BEST!!!!!!!! I now use egg-less Vegenaise mayo, but I still prefer mayo on toast over butter.

Actually bessfour throw some bacon on that thing and I'd eat it.

Bacon and peanut butter sandwich...droool.