Coney Island (restaurant)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Coney Island is a type of restaurant popular in the Midwestern United States, particularly in Detroit, Michigan, as well as the name for the chili dog after which the restaurant was named. Several restaurants claim to have invented the name and concept. Claimants include American Coney Island in downtown Detroit, with the then-owner contending that he had bought a similarly configured chili dog at the well known New York park. Similar claims are made by Todoroff's[1] in Jackson, Michigan.
The main dish is a Coney Island hot dog, more specifically, a hot dog made from pork with casing, all meat, high fat chili (no beans), diced yellow onion and yellow mustard. Variations on this theme include the "loose" coney, which substitutes ground hamburger meat for the hot dog (also known as a coney hamburger). When ordering a coney at a Coney Island, you only need to tell your waitress "one with everything" to communicate your request.
Since the owner of the first restaurant did not trademark the name or business plan, other restaurants began using the same name and formula. Most Coneys in the Detroit area are owned by Greek immigrants and other menu items include gyros and Greek salads, as well as corned beef and reuben sandwiches. Other fare is usually typical of a "greasy spoon." Coney Islands have developed a distinctive dining style that has been repeated in literally hundreds of different restaurants throughout the metropolitan Detroit area. At a Coney, one can always order breakfast, day or night. The sugar on the table will be in a common dispenser, not in packets. The table typically has squeeze bottles of ketchup and mustard, jelly packets for toast and napkins that are quite small and contained in a tabletop dispenser. Unlike many other restaurants, the menus are kept at the table and not removed after ordering. Many Coneys are open around the clock and some sell beer and wine (but no hard liquor). A leading supplier to Coney restaurants in southeast Michigan is Koegel Meats, located near Flint, Michigan, which makes the preferred Vienna variety of hot dog for Coneys with natural casings and markets the Detroit variety of Coney sauce and the drier Flint variety of Coney sauce.
The largest chain of restaurants is operated by National Coney Island, in business since 1965 and headquartered in Roseville, Michigan. However, Coney Island restaurants can be found in a wide variety of locations in the US, including Tulsa, Oklahoma; Worcester, Massachusetts [2]; and St. Petersburg, Florida[3].
The many Greek diners in Buffalo, New York are similar in format to Detroit-style Coney Islands, even serving their own style of dogs, called a Texas Hot. Unlike the Coney Island restaurants in Detroit, though, the Texas Hot is not the dominant menu item in a Buffalo Greek diner.
[edit] See also
- Coney Island, New York
- Coney Island (disambiguation)
