Raw Dog

Hot dogs. Poor people created them. Rich people found a way to charge fifteen dollars for them. They’re high culture, they’re low culture, they’re sports food, they’re hangover food, and they’re deeply American, despite having no basis whatsoever in America's Indigenous food traditions. You can love them, you can hate them, you cut them up and put them in a bowl of macaroni and cheese, but you can’t avoid the great American hot dog. Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs is part investigation into the cultural and culinary significance of hot dogs and part travelogue documenting a cross-country road trip researching the landscape of American hot dogs as they’re served today. From avocado and spice in the West to ass-shattering chili in the East to an entire salad on a slice of meat in Chicago, Loftus and her soon-to-be-ex eat their way across the country during the strange summer of 2021, a brief window of the year between waves of a plague that the American government has the