Hot dog towers... the decadent treat for our turbulent times

Emily Heil

Towers are a potent symbol. They famously populate fairy tales and science fiction, and you don’t need to be the hero of a Dan Brown novel to get that they stand for virility and power.

As a restaurant vessel, they command attention. Order a seafood tower and you get a show. As it crosses the dining room, the dramatic, stacked-high dish, with its ice bed and shimmering displays of bivalves and claws, conveys opulence and excess, a legacy of its origins in the oyster bars and bistros of 19th-century France.

Recently, a new, far-lower-browed tower has entered the group chat: Behold the hot dog tower, a true emblem of our troubled times, in which the humble frankfurter has been quite literally elevated to VIP status.

At Ghostburger in Washington’s Shaw neighborhood, chef Vincent Badiee late last year added to its happy-hour menu a $79 Glorious Weenie Tower of Power, an over-the-top, three-tiered amalgamation of four hot dogs, eight sliders, a quartered cheesesteak, fries and onion rings. The idea, he says, was to lure more people in for sit-down dining instead of just takeout and delivery at Ghostburger, which began as a pandemic-era pop-up inside the more upscale Espita Mezcaleria and eventually took over the space.

“We’re trying to get people in and having more fun,” says Badiee, who is adding fine-dining touches he brought with him from his previous position as the chef at the elegant farm-to-table Restaurant at Patowmack Farm. The dish’s arresting visual appeal follows the adage that diners first eat with their eyes. “It has to be striking,” he says. “I want people to be excited when it comes out.”

He isn’t the only one offering dramatic tiers of hot dogs. In Richmond, Black Lodge is serving its own “Tower of Power” with dogs, patty melts, wings and fries. Trina’s Starlite Lounge in Somerville, Massachusetts, serves hot dogs on towers fashioned from old-school Miller Lite trays. Eater traced the origins of the micro-trend, which it lovingly declared to be “an undeniably unserious idea,” to Sir Weiners in Charleston’s Lamar’s Sporting Club, where the wildly photogenic towers often arrive at tables heralded by servers waving lit sparklers.

Perhaps they’re nothing more than another flashy gimmick made for the TikTok era. And they certainly feel like a mascot for these shaky economic times, when even buying eggs feels like a dicey financial proposition.

But can a hot dog tower fully replicate the seafood tower experience? I tried both in succession and I can say the answer is absolutely yes - especially if one expands the idea of what luxury means these days.

I enlisted my husband and our friends, a couple who are deeply committed to the seafood tower lifestyle (one of them actually has the T-shirt to prove it) and we began at the elegant Café Riggs downtown, where the ornate ceilings and banquettes felt like the perfect backdrop for our “Riggs Plateau,” which consisted of a dozen oysters and a dozen plump shrimp, accompanied by pots of branzino crudo, tuna tartare, a cucumber and sour cream mixture topped with caviar and chips.

I should note that at $90, the selection was a relative bargain compared to similar towers at some of the finer restaurants around town. Still, the menu item is undeniably decadent, and we enjoyed it with the classic and appropriately fancy pairings of martinis and sparkling wine.

We dug in, enjoying the visual feast as well as the lovely little communal rituals that come with a tower: asking if everyone’s okay with your squeezing the muslin-wrapped lemon over everything, comparing bites (“ooh, try mixing a little more horseradish with the cocktail sauce!”) and making sure everyone has their share. The Maine oysters were briny, the tuna was fresh and nearly creamy, and the caviar offered pleasant pops.

Generous though it was, this seafood tower did not a dinner make, so we rounded out the meal with an order of fries, plus chicken liver pâté for smearing on crusty bread and a ramekin of lobster mac and cheese. The elegant food, sumptuous setting and beautiful crowd (“I don’t think I’ve seen this many good-looking people in one place,” my husband said as we made our way to the door) felt like a bubble separating us from the uglier and tumultuous world outside, where thousands of workers were being laid off, the markets were teetering and global alliances were fraying.

A few nights later, the same group ventured out to try the tower at Ghostburger, where we sidled up to the long bar for margaritas and beer. Despite our more casual environs, the tower - a heftier serving piece fashioned from wrought iron and wood - arrived to the same acclaim and excitement as its fancier forebear. Along with the identical, obligatory taking of photos destined for the ’gram before eating could commence. This time, we definitely didn’t need to supplement the tower with any more sides.

It, too, was eye-catching. The dogs were fancifully garnished and rested atop piles of fries and onion rings. The cheesesteak was nestled with glossy-bunned sliders. Of course, the vibe this time was different. Our faces were lit by the pink neon sign behind the bar instead of the soft glow of Art Deco-style chandeliers. And we were scarfing burgers and dogs, albeit ones made with far more care than your average sidewalk fare. (A favorite was the “Mushroom Glizzy,” whose toppings included mushrooms, cheese, barbecue sauces and jalapeños with enough bite to cut through it all.)

But our weenie adventure had more in common with the previous one than I thought it might: Just like we had around the seafood tower, we picked, we sampled, we compared and we traded. We made sure everyone had their share of the gooey, salty cheesesteak. We divvied up the sliders.

We all enjoyed it together, and we finished the meal content and slightly grease-stained but smiling, which might just be the biggest luxury of all these days - no matter what’s on the tower.  |  The Washington Post