HUMBOLDT PARK — A Chicago chef wanted a hot dog-themed birthday. His industry friends delivered in a big way.
Mike Simmons, chef/owner at Cafe Marie-Jeanne, 1001 N. California Ave., was surprised with an "epic" four-foot-long, 15-pound Chicago-style char dog at his 40th birthday party last week. The group split the monster dog into "one-pound hot dog steaks" so it was easier to eat.
The hot dog was made by cafe employees and Jan Rickerl, a veteran chef who Simmons described as a "technical wizard."
Rickerl put ground beef and pork into a giant synthetic casing he pieced together to create the dog itself, Simmons said. Then he smoked it for four hours and loaded it up with a huge quantity of fixings, including a half gallon of neon relish and a pint of celery salt.
"It was uncanny," Simmons said of the taste.
The enormous bun was made with help from Gina Nangiameli from Little Goat Bakery, which makes sense considering Rickerl is a longtime colleague of celebrity chef Stephanie Izard and currently works the kitchen at Duck Duck Goat.
"If it has something to do with food, he is really adept. He's the best cook I know," Simmons said of Rickerl.
"Once he got past the vision and the schematic, he probably didn't have too much trouble. It's all the same techniques whether it's a large scale or small scale."
Rickerl said "there were a few things to work out," including determining whether it would fit in the smoker, which it ultimately did.
"That's part of the job I enjoy ... figuring out what you can make happen and how to make it work," Rickerl said.
Difficult to execute or not, the massive hot dog made for Simmons' "most epic" birthday ever.
"This is in the top 2 birthdays. I think I had a pretty awesome all skateboarding birthday party when I was 11 years old. Everybody shredded really hard and had a lot of fun. This is probably the most epic, though," he said.
At the end of the night, there was about eight inches hot dog left — leftovers the restaurant staff ended up using for hot dog scrambled eggs and hot dog fried rice, Simmons said.
"I feel like, even though I gave myself an exquisite hangover, the hot dog helped mitigate that hangover," he said with a laugh.
