What’s Up? Hot Dog!: Gourmet hot dogs for the working class

Hot dogs have long been held back by the ketchup mafia. Every once in a while, mustard and onions were allowed in on the action, but for the longest time the sweet red sauce ran the show.

Hot dogs have long been held back by the ketchup mafia. Every once in a while, mustard and onions were allowed in on the action, but for the longest time the sweet red sauce ran the show.

Enter Matt and Jenna Hagarty, husband and wife hot dog… connoisseurs? It certainly seems that way, with their 25-seat, punk rock hangout in Hastings Sunrise offering nearly a dozen different versions of the classic dugout snack.

You’ve got the best-selling Matt and She’s, a dog so loaded down with mac ’n’ cheese, bits of bacon and green onion that you need a fork to slay the beast; you’ve got the Reuben, a corned beef, swiss cheese and sauerkraut creation that can proudly call itself one of What’s Up? Hot Dog!’s original three; and you can’t forget the Hanzai, the pickled ginger, cucumber, wasabi and sriracha party that rolls with a tempura-and-black-sesame-seed entourage.

They pickle their own onions, smoke their own pork, and all their dogs – made with all-natural Two Rivers beef or Field Roast veggie – run from eight to 11 bucks.

“We put a lot of time and work into the ingredients,” says Matt proudly from one of the red vinyl booths. “There’s no space cheese or anything on top.”

So, it’s no surprise that within seven short months of opening, the couple, who also both play in local bands, now hold Silver for Best Hot Dog in our Best of the City Dining readers’ choice poll. They also won Best Cheap Eats, Best Diner/Greasy Spoon (city wide AND East Side), and Bronze for Best Burger.

Not bad for a couple who didn’t really want to do a restaurant in the first place.

“My goal wasn’t necessarily to create a restaurant,” admits Matt with a laugh. “Our food is really good and it’s gotten a lot better since we started, but my goal was just to create another place where we could hang out that wasn’t just a bar.

“Vancouver is so saturated with sports bars and there’s a lot of places I love to go to see bands,” he continues, “but in between those two things I didn’t feel like there was a lot of spaces that had more than just drinking.”

Inspired by tour stops at Tubby Dog in Calgary, a place where all-ages live shows and hot dogs are a match made in heaven, the walls at What’s Up? Hot Dog! are lined with posters from Vancouver’s punk rock past while tunes by Weezer, Bad Sports, Protex and The Monks blare over the speakers. And true to their goal to have more than just booze, the bar became a Blue Jays hot spot in the summer, has a well-played pinball arcade, and is building on its popular Simpson’s trivia night with impending NHL ’94 tournaments and Tape Jam – a VHS and Betamax movie night that will see custom hot dogs to match the movies.

Matt adds that they want people in the neighbourhood to know it’s also a place to just come by with a laptop to work. Fair warning though: those keys will be a Mole sauce magnet.