Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
unparalleled
It’s all about the best bread and the best sausages. We mail-ordered some dogs once, right from the source. Calabrese, hot links, kielbasa, all from different vendors. You just know someone had made a regular study of this, buying Polish from every possible vendor, taste-testing, taste-testing again. Retesting regularly — is this one still the best? Choosing on the basis of quality, not price. They’re that good.
Heaven.
Many more pictures here at Foodhoe’s Foraging. But tandoori chicken sausage, really? Don’t know about the Top Dog on Center Street, but my Top Dog on Durant wouldn’t serve tandoori chicken sausage. Might as well serve up Tofurkey dogs.
It’s about a cloudless China blue sky and a gentle breeze and perfect 68F weather, geeks and jocks and hairy-armpitted locals and old farts like me who see this place as fair game for pilgrimage. Can I still eat one of their Kielbasas? It’s 1/3 beef, after all. Maybe I’ll settle for Calabrese, or a Brat. Maybe I’ll settle for three.
I went to Der Wienerschnitzel this last weekend. I was that hungry. The kid behind the counter didn’t know if their Polish was all pork or a mix, so I ordered their turkey dog instead. Would I make it a double, throw in a drink and fries? Sure.
Der Wienerschnitzel dogs have an indescribable texture. Kind of like if plastic could be beaten into a meringue, then boiled into submission. The buns are gummy and tasteless, the mustard fluorescent. Throwing on a ton of relish didn’t help.
I finished one, threw away the other. Told you I was hungry.
D.
My sympathies about Der Wienerschnitzel! That must have been some pretty low blood sugar to get you in there. I feel kind of the same way about Taco Bell and its Velveeta-inspired “Mexican” food.
Just got back from Moscow, where I indulged in one of my favourite cuisines – Georgian food! Juicy kebabs, spicy bean paste, savory cheese bread, garlicly eggplant rolls stuffed with walnut paste! Yum! If you haven’t had Georgian, it’s worth a search to see if there are any Georgian places in LA. Sadly, there are no Georgian restaurants in Geneva or the surrounding area.
Wow, you MUST have been hungry to eat at Wienerschnitzel. Even Bruce and I won’t go there…of course I can’t even eat turkey dogs any longer.
Kira, I can always do what I did when we lived in the Far North: find it on the internet and prepare it for myself. Spicy bean paste and those eggplant rolls sound wonderful.
Sis, I think it was a combination of hunger and wishful thinking: How bad can it be? Pretty damn bad, it turns out.
God, I am SO HUNGRY right now.
Top Dog is surely worthy of a pilgrimage.
Oh, it is. Whenever we go to Berkeley, I usually make a pilgrimage.