We were making a road trip to Hawthorne, NY in early December to the semi-annual Henckel’s warehouse sale, and decided to combine this road trip with a tour of some of the Roadfood-recommended hot dog joints in Southwest Connecticut.
On the way to the sale we stopped in Danbury, CT, at JKs – home of the “Texas Hot Weiner”. What a great family place! It was a good size, and you could tell it was a real neighborhood spot as most of the waitstaff were greeting customers by name, and sitting down in the booth with them to take their order. Check out the great road sign –
We ordered 3 dogs, and the bacon cheese fries. The dogs were split and grilled, and were on some kind of a home made or bakery roll, as these weren’t the standard white bread hot dog buns.
A plain (I tend to like just mustard on my dog)
And Tim ordered both a slaw and bacon -
and a chili-cheese dog -
I stole some of the chili, and it was great off the dog, Tim loved it on the dog. The bacon cheese fries were really great – I’m sure it was a frozen fry, but they dressed it up with real cheese (vs. gooey processed stuff), and real bacon.
It had already started snowing, so we made our way to the knife sale, which was pretty amazing. If anyone is in need of really good knives, they had an amazing selection, along with blocks, gadgets, and some enamel/cast iron cookware at excellent prices – we figured out we saved 43% over the cheapest online price we could find for what we bought. They run the sale 2-3 times a year at their warehouse in Hawthorne NY.
After stowing our goodies, we headed back into Connecticut by way of 95, and our next stop was at Swanky Franks in Norwalk. A great little roadside dive of a place. They offer dogs two ways – split and grilled, or deep-fried. We decided to try one of each, plain, with a side of rings. Both dogs were great, but I think I preferred the split dog slightly over the fried dog – the grilling added an extra snap and flavor. We’d pass on the rings next time (unfortunately I guess we should have tried the fries based on the posted review – next time!)
We split the dogs to try both
Our last stop was at Rawley’s in Fairfield. By this time the snow was coming down pretty hard and it was dark, so we didn’t get any pics of the building. Suffice it to say it’s another “joint” with lots of character. We were also pretty full by this time so stuck to two plain dogs again, with no sides – a decent dog, I’m sure we probably would be happier with some of the toppings, but it was the end of a long day! It was pretty dark inside, too, so the quality of the picture is not great, but you get the idea. I’d definitely go again and try some of the other dog options.
We got home sated, and satisfied, and happy we finally had a chance to try some of Connecticut’s best dogs!
