Hot Diggity Dog - The Albuquerque Dog

Chili, cheddar cheese, jalapenos, hot salsa, crushed tortilla chips

I really don’t deal well with spicy food. I can handle a little bit of heat sure, but on a scale of 1-10, I try to stick closer to 1 or 2… It hasn’t always been this way, there was a time I can remember in my life where I was eating hot wings indiscriminately, and actually preferred them to be cooked as if cast in the fires of hell. “The hotter the better” I thought then, but not now… So what went wrong? When did all of this change? I don’t know exactly, but I do know that now, I am spice’s bitch, and we’ve been trying to avoid contact with one another for a while now.

So why ON EARTH would I ever get the Albuquerque dog from Hot Diggity Dog? A torturous monster of hot salsa, jalapenos, and hate. Why would I challenge something that I KNEW was going to best me? Because I have some fool’s notion that I will try every hot dog on their menu, and I will write about it… and I will not stop with Hot Diggity Dog, I will eat everything everywhere, and I will write about it all. Lofty goals, yes, but when one sets up a challenge, one follows through. To do a thing only 80% of the way is to not really do a thing at all… I was setting myself up for misery, but certainly not failure.

With that steadfast commitment, I reluctantly ordered the hot dog that would be as yet, my greatest challenge… here’s how it went.



I got this dog on the same day as the Memphis, and the Cincinnati. Both of which were chili-central hot dogs, and I saw the Albuquerque and decided to throw that one in there, too… as it also has chili on it. I don’t know if I had just, in my haste, overlooked the other ingredients, or if I did notice, and thought that “well, I might as well get it over with” actually, it was a little bit of both. I did  know that once ordered there was no going back. They throw the hot dogs together so fast there, that if you have any doubts whatsoever, its already too late, because your hot dogs are being served.

 Most of my work on these hot dog reviews is done at home. I get the dogs, I take them home, photograph them (for those fancy portraits that I make) and then sit down to (hopefully) enjoy the hot dog.

As soon as I opened the box the hot dog was in I knew that I had made a terrible mistake.
The sweet sting of hot pepper everything wafted up at me, and my first reaction was to throw the hot dog away. I betrayed that notion and carried on. What I could see was a pile of toppings, piled on more toppings and all of it had some kind of “kick” to it, except for the tortilla chips. Plain tortilla chips, lightly crumbled on top as if to tease and say “this is your only comfort in hell”

I took the hot dog, plated it up, and sat down with it, at 5:00, and tried to psyche myself up. I had just finished two other hot dogs, and this one honestly was not looking very enticing.
after staring at it for 2 minutes, I decided to dive in.

5:02 - 1st bite, not bad, it was the very first bite though, so not all of the components made themselves well known just yet… I got some heat, enough to make me drink half a glass of water, tear up a little bit, but ultimately it wasn’t the end of the world… I knew the second bite would not be so easy.

5:05 seriously I am staring at this hot dog, just staring. Its just me, and the hot dog. I am thinking about what it might take to do this. Preparation. I should have prepared. I should have worked up to this thing.. I should have gone on a hot wing diet for like a month and gradually worked myself up to “Suicide” I was beginning to doubt myself (keep in mind this is only after the 1st bite) and I thought, its only 5 more bites TOPS, how bad can it really be, just stop being a baby and eat the stupid hot dog. Fine.

5:12 - 2nd bite. Okay. Good flavor. I get the chili, the dog, familiar to me now, the salsa comes in, okay, not ba—OH THERE IT IS. I shot upright. I now begin pacing back and forth from the living room to the kitchen, still chewing, afraid to swallow what I am sure is a PURE BALL OF FIRE, there is no mercy here, I know that no matter what I do, my mouth is just going to burn for the rest of eternity, I resign myself to this and finally swallow the second bite. Now its war, and I am losing.

5:17 I finally sit down in front of the hot dog again, mouth still burning, and at this point I am just MAD. Why am I doing this stupid thing? I wait for some of the burning to subside, there is no way I am going in for a third bite until things cool down a little bit. This takes forever, so while I wait, and stare, I decide to look a little closer at what it is exactly that’s doing me in. I notice that there is actually some cheddar cheese on this thing, I would never have known. I take the hot dog, just the hot dog, and nibble on  it a little bit to see just how much the hot devil ingredients have corrupted the flavor of the dog itself. Its actually quite good, and the flavor of the chili and salsa (with only a hint of the heat from the salsa) suited the dog quite nicely, and after a while of playing with my food like a child trying to avoid the inevitable, I went in for round three..

5:25 - 3rd bite. Pretty much the EXACT SAME reaction that I had after the second bite, only this time I think I punched a wall. That's it! Quittin' time! I made it halfway, and the hot dog won.

Did I give up? Well, maybe. But I gave it a shot. My goal here is not to conquer everything that I try (I am soon due for the Hot Diggity Dog challenge 6 hot dogs, on a giant roll, topped with chili, cheese, your choice of: coleslaw/sauerkraut/baked beans, AND french fries.. to be finished in under 10 minutes – YIKES!) my goal is to try it, hopefully enjoy it, and write about the experience. I honestly wasn’t “enjoying” it. Not that it was a “bad” hot dog… the flavor was great before it set itself on fire and tried to kill me, I just could not go on with the torture and decided to throw in the towel and get to writing. I didn’t have much to go on, as the only “notes” I managed to take at the time were scribbled on a folded up envelope while pacing back and forth and said only the timestamp of each bite. The rest had to come from what I remembered, and it took me awhile to go back and confront that memory, because I initially tried to forget the experience completely.

I give it a 3.1 - for the time it took, in seconds, for the hot dog to go from “tasty” to “burning my mouth out of my face”.

I would still like to visit Albuquerque someday, I just might not eat while I am there.

HOT DIGGITY DOG is located at 1325 Fruitville Pike, Lancaster PA

the Albuquerque Dog is $3.09 - Buy at your own risk.