My First Time... A Life Changing Experience

I remember my first time… Like it was yesterday… It was mid-August… Of the year 2000.

Driven to the moment by the urge for a shriveled up wiener.

Having hidden out in New Mexico until the Y2K bug had safely passed, I had embarked on a new adventure in New Jersey in May 2000… The first few months were whirlwind as I got up to speed with my new job at Monmouth University and benefited from a free 11-day trip to France and Switzerland the beginning of August… The third weekend in August was my last moment to relax before the 2000-01 athletic season began with the field hockey and the soccers and the football and hwat not… The third weekend in August is when I went for that shriveled up wiener.

I traveled 60 miles for this shriveled up wiener… The first time I ever traveled for the expressed purpose of eating food... It was worth it… Life would never be the same

The shriveled up wiener… The Ripper… The semi-famous hot dog at Rutt’s Hut in Clifton, New Jersey… I had it seen the year before on a PBS program called “A Hotdog Program”… The show highlighted a handful of restaurants across the nation which were serving up wieners in various different manners.

The Ripper (on the left)... The shriveled up wiener that changed my life... If you're into neon green relish (I'm not), the right is the dog for you.

Rutt’s Hut, which is located in the shadow of Meadowlands Stadium - seriously, the guy who whacked Jimmy Hoffa probably ate here before he buried the union leader in the end zone, features a deep-fried hot dog… And it’s so delicious… They call the basic hot dog “The Ripper” because it’s deep fried until the skin rips open… When you hear deep-fried, you think the hot dog is going to be greasy... But it’s anything but… The outside is crisp and the inside is juicy, with a little bit of enchantment in every bite… In the future, on drives from Monmouth to Amherst, Ohio I would stop at Rutt’s Hut and buy two Rippers to eat there and then buy four more Rippers which I’d wrap in aluminum foil and toss in a cooler and eat on the rest of the eight-hour journey home.


After devouring that wiener, life would never be the same… My culinary life before this moment was bland… Embarrassingly bland.

A lot of factors played into the blandness.

Growing up in subrural Cleveland, the Dicks didn’t vacation much… Us youngsters always had weekends filled with the baseball and the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts and the football and the soccer (they called me Anvil Toe) and the softball and the newspaper routes… And because in most cases those days labor unions were just pseudo-pyramid schemes that only benefited the lazy old people, my dad was always left with off-peak weeks of vacation like the third week in February and the second week in October… So there weren’t many vacations for the Dicks… When you don’t travel much, you don’t travel for food much… We did go to the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee… Which ironically is where Cherry Coke first debuted and McDonald’s first unveiled the McRib Sandwich outside of its initial “test marketing” in the Midwest in 1981… And for the next 10 years we thought we were on the culinary cutting edge because we were among the first to experience the two culinary marvels of Americana.

Another factor is food travel television had not yet seen the success it now enjoys… Anthony Bourdain’s “A Cook’s Tour” would debut a year later and would be a bust… His second offering “No Reservations” would appear in 2005…  Diners, Drive-ins and Dives (2006) was still six years away… No one even thought of anything as awesome as  Man vs. Food (2008)… It was nearly a decade before Best Thing I Ever Ate (2009) debuted… Up until that point, a naïve Thomas thought everybody ate at Hot Dog Heaven and The Chatterbox and McDonald’s and pizza at Chicken Galore and Olde Town(e) Pizza… My cheeseburgers had cheese… American cheese… And if we got crazy, it had bacon… My pancakes were buttermilk… And if we got crazy, it had blueberries… I had heard of the concept of “regional food”, but I thought it was a myth… Like the Loch Ness Monster and Eskimo(e)s… A "Hot Dog Program" opened my eyes… And the first chance I had to try one of the places featured, I was all over that shriveled up wiener.

Also in those days I wasn’t even saying “The Internet Is Going to Be Huge Someday” yet... Yelp wasn’t started until 2004… Trip Advisor was in its infancy… Urbanspoon didn’t come around until 2007… Roadfood and Chowhound were nowhere to be found… That rhymed.

Cutting edge culinary experiences for wee baby Thomas in the 1980s.

The final factor was personal financing… The Dicks didn’t eat out much… Partly because we weren't loaded... Partly because who really needed to? … Regi makes awesome lasagna… And chicken paprikas… And tacos… And city chicken… And meatloaf… When we did eat out, there weren’t many choices in the then-culinarily devoid Lorain County… Chicken McNuggets Shanghai was the extent of the Dicks pushing the culinary envelope... A special event called for a visit to Chi-Chi’s… And once in my first 18 years we even ate at Red Lobster!, which was like the greatest eating experience ever… In college at Baldwin-Wallace College, life consisted of dorm cafeteria food, 10-cent wing night at The Oriole Cafe, crunchy peanut butter and an occasional trip of decadence to Olive Garden for all the breadsticks and zuppa toscana you can devour... After that life took me to Statesboro, Georgia and Atlanta Georgia and Wilmington, North Carolina and Las Cruces, New Mexico for graduate school and an internship and an entry-level job… All stops had me living under the poverty level, which meant Ramen noodles and lots of apartment made Prego spaghetti and all the leftover press box food I could fit in my knapsack… The summer of 2000 is the first time I truly made a livable wage which made culinary adventuring and that first search for the shriveled up wiener possible.

After that first wiener, life changed… That wiener I just devoured was a bite of America… And I wanted more America… I now wanted to try other wienerss… See who was doing them different… See if they were doing them better… Maybe Hot Dog Johnny’s in Buttzville… Or Gray’s Papaya in NYC… Or Nathan’s Famous in Coney Island… Then I thought why stop at Hot Dogs… There were adventures into Philadelphia to try the various cheesesteaks… And random trips to the fantastic diner scene in driving distance in New Jersey… And sauseege and meat and cheese, wherever I can get it… And why not jump on the train into New York City for some cheesecake.

At that moment I made an agreement with myself to never settle for normal food when on road trips, if possible… Even if it meant forgoing a free team meal to go find some otherworldly cheese fries or an extraordinary burrito… The team can go eat a free meal at Jason’s Deli… I’m headed to Mick’s Karma Bar.

From the moment of that shriveled wiener, I’ve done some sort of research prior to every trip … A little bit of internet research… A little bit of advanced intel from my people on the streets… A little bit of consulting my notebooks where I jot down notes for potential stops… Yes, I have some notebooks… A little bit of consulting the locals upon arrival.

And now a big part of all vacations is finding food… Whether it be Curtis’ All-American BBQ in Putney, Vermont or Lambert’s Café in Ozarks, Missouruh or Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken in Memphis, Tennessee or Gorilla BBQ in Pacifica, California… Every trip is more exciting with more exciting food.

Traveling for food... Passing it on to the next generation.

People laugh when I’m willing to drive 80 miles for fried chicken and pie… But if it’s what you love, no distance is too far… And I love America and its wieners and sauseeges and meat and pie and America fries... And each new food adventure is like experiencing that first time all over again.