You Can’t Go Home Again

(Originally published 10/30/17)

A week ago, Sunday, I stopped at a street food cart in Battery Park City. It was one that I had passed by multiple times and often contemplated patronizing. In the end, though, I always concluded that I did not particularly like what was on the menu. Still, there was this curious and powerful pull at work—a byproduct of my boyhood, I think, when those hot dogs and crinkle-cut French fries had unmistakable allure.

The cart in question serves Nathan’s famous frankfurters, since 1916, and their very deep-fried potatoes. When I was a youth, there was a big Nathan’s restaurant on Central Park Avenue in Yonkers. It was about a fifteen-minute drive from my front door in the Bronx. I fondly remember consuming their dogs and fries on an outside picnic table. My kid-friendly stomach never failed to appreciate franks and fried anything by the side of the road. It is not the case anymore.

Anyway, I threw caution to the wind last week and purchased two hot dogs—unadorned—and an order of crinkle-cut fries. I do not use condiments, except ketchup occasionally on my French fries. That is something that has remained constant in my life. The picture menu on the outside of the cart included numerous additions for the wieners, including sauerkraut, cheese, and chili. The crinkle-cuts, too, could be topped with melted cheese, bacon bits, or chili. Suffice it to say, my contemporary stomach could not stomach any such additions.

Interestingly, I never really liked Nathan’s packaged hot dogs from the supermarket. They had a disagreeable crunch and left a strong garlicky aftertaste. But I boiled them at home. That is not quite the same as putting them on a griddle en masse, where they commingle with one another and tan an appealing black brown. The frankfurter, for me, was a thing I relished in the open air at baseball games, cookouts, and from street wagons. Home cooking of them was—more often than not—a strikeout.

I hoped to reclaim a glimmer of my youthful appreciation of things no longer appreciated. Mission accomplished? Partially. The franks tasted very, very salty, but the crunch did not turn me off as they typically did in the cozy confines of home. It was the crinkle-cut French fries that pushed me over the limit, I believe, reminding me once more that you can’t go home again. The squirrels and sparrows, who got the lion’s share of them, enjoyed the greasy potatoes a lot more than me. The bottle of lukewarm water that I washed them down with proved to be my only salvation.

Next time, I vowed to call on a smoothie seller, which are now competing in earnest with the hot dog and pretzel peddlers. But less than a week later—on Saturday—when I passed by a fellow selling every imaginable smoothie drink, I did not break stride. I had skipped breakfast and was too hungry to settle for a mysterious fruit cocktail. For some inexplicable reason, though, I could not get past the previous week’s salty hot dog experience. They were on my mind as I pondered what eating a couple of them would be like sans the unnecessary complication of extremely greasy French fries. And so, I got up for Round Two. My conclusion: I would eat Nathan’s franks in the future. They are certainly a giant step above their main competitor on the street: Sabrett. But I fully accept that Nathan’s famous fare will never taste like it did forty years ago on that picnic table down wind of a heavily trafficked thoroughfare.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)