What happens when a customer orders all 50 toppings for their Happy Dog hot dog? The kitchen piles on every single topping, that’s what.

That was the case this weekend when one mischievous youngster was given free rein by her parents to fill out her own hot dog order form. That checklist was then delivered to the server without so much as a cursory glance from mom or dad.

The attached picture is what that order looks like when it lands in front of kitchen manager Dan Garcia, who had the pleasure of filling the bun. That meant piling on a hot dog, bourbon pork and beans, everything bagel cream cheese, SpaghettiOs, Fruit Loops, vodka sauerkraut, kimchi ketchup, sliced cukes, habanero hot sauce, a fried egg and 41 other meat, cheese, pickled, fresh and saucy toppings.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever seen it happen,” Garcia says. “I assure you it wasn’t pretty.”

Owner Eric Williams points out that while perfectly acceptable, the practice remains extremely rare and wholly inadvisable.

“It very rarely happens, but it does happen,” he says. “We try to dissuade people from doing it based on how it would taste. But like I said, it happens.”

This article appears in Nov 19-25, 2014.

For 25 years, Douglas Trattner has worked as a full-time freelance writer, editor and author. His work as co-author on Michael Symon's cookbooks have earned him four New York Times Best-Selling Author honors, while his longstanding role as Scene dining editor has garnered awards of its own.

11 replies on “What a 50-Topping Order Looks Like to the Chef at Happy Dog”

  4. I want to know what’s so cute about parents celebrating an irresponsible act by their less than mature child?!

  5. Edward Vullo, you’re kidding right? What responsibility did the little girl have that she neglected by deciding she wanted to try a hot dog with all the toppings?

  6. @ Bob: If the article is accurate in that “the mischievous youngster was given free rein by her parents”, and if the parents were aware that she selected every available topping before she handed it in to the server, and that she couldn’t possibly eat the whole thing as served, I would regard that as wasteful and irresponsible, and I would regard the parents as overly permissive. If she took the leftover home and finished it later, no problem.

  8. Keep ordering all the toppings and see how long it lasts before they remove that ability from the customer. Also, that looks disgusting.

  9. Happy Dog- best gimmick around. Love to hear the suckers go on and on about how they love this ‘cool’ place. An overpriced generic hot dog smothered in your choice of ingredients. wow. hot dog shops used to do this sort of thing all the time, but they didn’t offer 50 toppings.

  10. Thats crap. I used to get 50 toppings all the time and its delicious. Then they told me that they refused to make one with 50 toppings any more and i could put 12-15 max. I tried again another time and was told the same thing. I stopped going due to that. I know more than a few friends that had the same exact issue and quit going as well.

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