Restaurant Mon Oct 19 2009

New Menu Items at Wiener & Still Champion

Wiener and Still Champion, 802 Dempster St. in Evanston, is one of the rare hot dog stands that doesn't rest on its laurels. Hot Doug's aside, it's a rarity to find innovation in the realm of mom'n'pop fast food joints. But as some new items debuting on this spot's menu today prove that a little ingenuity takes you a long way.

Take the corn dog. Most places offer the same boring version pulled out of the freezer. At Wiener and Still Champion, they make their own "Dippin' Dogs," all-beef hot dogs hand-dipped in a slightly sweet, polenta-like cornmeal batter when you order one. The result might ruin you for inferior corn dogs forever. Now owner Gus Paschalis has taken his Dippin' Dogs to a new, gut-busting level. The top of the line used to be the Deluxe Dippin' Dog (or "DDD," named in honor of the restaurant's appearance on the Food Network show "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives"), two Dippin' Dogs covered in homemade chili and Merkt's cheddar cheese. Now you've got the Big Dipper, a 1/3 pound, 10-inch hot dog wrapped in enough batter to make it hard to imagine actually eating.

Weiner and Still Champion already sported country fried bacon, a lightly breaded strip of bacon deep-fried to a golden brown. Now you can get the same treatment with slices of gyro meat and served with a new Mediterranean cucumber sauce that's not as tangy as tzatziki but just as fine a complement to the beef and lamb of the gyro. The new "deep-fried chili" balls were an unexpected treat: dollops of chili wrapped in Dippin' Dog batter and fried, they look like hushpuppies until you bit into them.

And speaking of that country-fried bacon, there's a new variety that'll pop up "on special occasions," like football Sundays: candied bacon, tossed in a brown sugar-habanero glaze. Sweet, spicy and addictive.

— Andrew Huff / Comments (2)