With so many different kinds of sausage products, from the hot dogs to the foot-longs to the wild game sausages, it's impossible not to make a mental connection to a certain famous "encased-meat emporium." But fRedhots & Fries goes further than Hot Doug's, venturing into sandwiches, fresh burgers and some of the best Belgian-style frites in town.
Owner and manager Fred Markoff doesn't mind the comparison. "Doug and I are friends. We complement each other. That was my inspiration—standing outside [waiting at Doug's] in the middle of January, freezing!" Now people have the option to make their way to Glenview to stand in the summer heat or winter cold for his wares. With just five tables in front, there's not a lot of room to maneuver, but customers don't seem to mind; even mid-afternoon, when we spoke to Fred, fRedhots was in full swing.
Now, the name of your establishment is fRedhots and Fries, but you really serve up "frites" in a Belgian style.
That's true. People still ask, "what's a frite?" In America, it's "fries" and people expect to get hot dogs and fries, so a "fRedhots and fries" is a hot dog and fries in Chicago. But we're really serving the Belgian style frites that we've become famous for. I have not made the pilgrimage [to Belgium] yet, but I have it on good, reliable sources that our frites are the best potatoes this side of the Atlantic. They come here for the frites and the aiolis, the dipping sauces.
You have a wide range of game sausage; is there any source of wild meat that you haven't been able to track down?
I can't really say there's one particular kind of meat that I'm trying to get a hold of because a lot of these meats are not available. You know, I can't take anything that hunters bring back. And they get more meats than are commercially raised for the food chain. So, yeah, I'd like to be able to get some other exotic meats, but they're also very very expensive. So I look at that as a limiting factor on some of my selections.
When you mention hunters, I think of people coming in with big sides of elk.
Oh, yes. That's one of our more popular game sausages. It's blended with some smoked bacon and cheddar cheese. We serve that up usually with a chutney; spring or fall, it depends on the season. In the spring I'll go with a fresh spring berry chutney, with ginger in there, and in the fall I go with a cranberry chutney, along with some grilled onions and some Dusseldorf mustard.
I understand that you're a non-adherent to the "no ketchup on hot dogs" rule.
Well, we are a ketchup-friendly zone, let's put it that way. (laughs) Much to the dismay of many Chicago hot dog afficionados -
The purists.
The purists. The true purists. We couldn't survive without that Vegetable—actually I should say, fruit—sauce, as a topping. We serve a lot of families here, and [as an] interesting note, when we first opened up we did an unscientific survey. Ketchup on a hot dog: Acceptable or not acceptable? And the results came back from two different pollings within six months: Yes, it is acceptable!
Now mind you, it was only a couple votes different on each one of those scorings, and we had numerous mustard lovers stuffing the box! It still came up "ketchup." Universally, it is a condiment of the age and day. A lot of kids, that's what they grew up on. And some kids just never grow up.
I have to ask; with all your wild game sausage options and eclectic toppings, how often do you hear people say, "Oh! It's just like Hot Doug's!"
Not as frequently as I was at the beginning, but we do hear it. The comparison comes from a little bit of the layout, the look, and some of our unique menu items. I tell people that Doug inspired me to do fRedhots, but I based fRedhots on what the market needed at this location. Doug has a great concept for where he is and what he does; that was one of my favorite places to eat before I jumped off a cliff and decided to open my own place.
But, unlike Doug, you have a wide variety of sandwiches and burgers; what's your most popular non-sausage selection?
I would say our burgers. One particular sandwich? Our burgers rank second besides the hot dogs and sausages, followed real closely by our Italian beef.
And from your Italian beef, I believe, comes your Debris sandwich.
That's a byproduct of doing our own beef and gravy here. That's got all of what I call the "essence of Fred's beef." It's got the seasonings, the meat, and the vegetables that the beef cooks with, that I use to make the au jus gravy for the beef.
I would imagine that was inspired by a desire to not waste anything.
That was part of it, yes. But the other part came from New Orleans. I'm a big fan of New Orleans food, and there's a sub shop down there that does a Debris Po'Boy. We're not quite the same style; mine's got a lot less unchewable fat in there, but that's where the inspiration came from. Plus, hey; I was eating it myself, and throwing away the rest! And I felt so bad about throwing it away, that I threw it up as a sandwich on a recommendation of a friend of mine.
A couple Christmases ago, you got a lot of press for serving reindeer; do you have any plans to serve any other holiday- or childhood-related animals? Like maybe a Bugs Bunny hassenpfeffer sausage, for instance?
Actually, the bunny, we do at—get this—at Eastertime. It's a rabbit sausage with veal, that we serve up with shaved carrots infused with a maple wasabi blend. Tastes better than it sounds, too.
Are people more responsive to the reindeer at Christmas or the rabbit at Easter?
Well, the reindeer is definitely one of the bigger attractions that we run. We run that from Thanksgiving time through the end of December, then I hold back whatever may be left, and then when the Iditarod dogsled race gets ready to run at the beginning of March, I bring them back out in honor of the world's greatest overland race.
I wonder if there's anything subliminal about the fact that people are happier to eat reindeer than they are to eat what could be the Easter bunny.
(laughs) Yeah, probably. They're thinking "how am I getting my chocolate." It still hasn't been explained to me what a rabbit has to do with Easter.
Maybe you could use duck.
We've had that too! I just got through with a duck sausage that was flavored with an orange liqueur. And that's got a real good topping—champagne red pepper orange chutney. That did pretty well.
Well, any egg-bearing animal would probably do pretty well around Easter.
(laughs) Oh, yes. I had Elmer Fudd's heaven: "wabbit" and duck season at the same time.
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