Tuesday Recommended: Kayem Natural Casing "Old Tyme" Pork and Beef Frankfurters

To say that the Fenway Frank was the iconic food of my childhood would not be accurate; that accolade belongs to the Friendly’s Cone Head Sundae. However with summer—and at long last proper summer, when anxious hygienic precaution is gleefully disregarded at barbecues across this great nation—officially upon us, the hot dog takes center stage.

The hot dog was among my favorite foods as a kid, and no hot dog was more renowned than the Fenway Frank, served at Red Sox games at Fenway Park. A Red Sox game meant an order of two hot dogs, wrapped in wax paper and tucked into a cardboard enclosure designed, it seemed, to hold just about anything except the hot dogs and bag of peanuts wedged precipitously within, plus a coke that spent a fair amount of time between my feet, collecting errant peanut shells.1

I remember a time when you couldn’t get Fenway Franks in the stores—and then one day you could. It was in the mid 1990s, a period when commodities stuck with me emotionally: Super Soakers, Shark Week, Fenway Franks, &c. There’s a trend of millenial nostalgia around things like these that’s prevalent among people my age, and I suspect it has something to do with the tireless assault of marketing and advertising on the forming brain, psyche, and personality. Now approaching middle age—the distinct flavor of the nostalgia—a longing for a time one can’t return to, or which may never have existed—is irrevocably tied to these commodities. Proust had that whole thing about it with the cookie; I am transported by certain ads and the scent of polyethylene, the crude sheen of early CGI.

In a more troubling sense, the assault of retreads says something about our culture having given up on new ideas and in to market pressures, which dictate that broad appeal is synonymous with quality. But there is something more pleasurable and innocuous about the pull of nostalgia present in the hot dog.

It’s only recently that Kayem, a company based in Chelsea, Mass., was tapped to produce the Fenway Frank, but they seem not to have taken the assignment lightly. The blend of spices and the texture of each bite is fitting, somehow suited best to outdoor consumption, and pairs nicely with any number of condiments—in particular, the oft-overlooked sweet relish.

These hot dogs aren’t available in New York, so on my last trip to Boston, I bought two boxes of them (that’s ninety six hot dogs) to get me through, with a little luck, the rest of the summer. I’m cautiously optimistic.

Minor update: I’ve been absent for awhile because I’ve been traveling and preparing a chapbook of my April poems for submission. A couple slightly different iterations of the book are currently under consideration, and I plan on continuing to pursue publication options this summer. If you have any hot tips, please be in touch.