Before boarding a plane, I tend to opt for bland and uncontroversial food—namely, a very beige sandwich, bagel, or wrap that runs minimal risk of unsettling my stomach mid-flight. Such fare is not hard to come by at New York’s airports, home to many nondescript food purveyors selling shrink-wrapped carbs.
Delicious? Not necessarily. Expensive? Shockingly so. But for sheer utility, they curb my airport-induced hunger.
On a recent trip to Copenhagen—despite my aforementioned preflight dining habits—I found myself at the airport hunched over a fire-engine red table devoid of chairs, eating a fully loaded hot dog before noon. Dubious as I was of the concept of an airport hot dog, I was reassured by two things: my Danish boyfriend’s enthusiastic endorsement of Steff’s Place and the airy, clean vibe of the airport. This was not a place I worried about ingesting a never-before-seen bacterial strain, something I can’t say about my local airports.
The plush but not overwhelmingly bready bun hugged a skinny red-tinted sausage, an inch or so longer than the bun on either end. As I sunk my teeth into the dog, I was greeted to a pleasantly snappy bite, but the real showstopper was the small mountain of toppings. Think translucent, thinly sliced pickles, onions both raw and fried, ketchup, and Danish remoulade, a tangy, mustardy, slightly sweet mayo-based sauce. I inhaled it in roughly two bites. I found myself contentedly full, ideal conditions for a comfortable nap on the plane. The hot dog was not only delicious, but one of the most memorable meals of my trip.
Copenhagen is dotted with hot dog stands, most of them charmingly named after their respective owner: Jette’s Pølser (sausages, in English), Allan’s Pølser, John’s Hotdog Deli, and so forth. According to my source on the ground (my boyfriend), it’s not uncommon to pay a visit to a hot dog stand after going out drinking in Copenhagen, or for a cheap, no-frills snack in transit in the middle of the day.
They’ve been cherished and recognizable fixtures of the country since the 1920s. According to a brief history of the Danish hotdog on Visit Copenhagen’s website, sausage stands began to materialize on Denmark’s streets shortly after the First World War, in the likeness of similar vendors in neighboring Germany, Sweden, and Norway. The most classic version, rød pølse, is a pork sausage fragranced with warm spices like nutmeg and coriander, dyed red with carmine to achieve its distinctive crimson hue. “Regardless of assembly most hotdog vendors will offer similar variations on the basic hotdog format,” writes Visit Copenhagen. Some stands offer vegan or more “gourmet” riffs, like a black hot dog topped with gold leaf that once featured as a monthly special at John’s Hotdog Deli, per The Washington Post.
Of course, the city has much more to offer on the culinary front than its street sausages. You may be familiar with Copenhagen’s dining scene via Noma, the perennially lauded fine dining restaurant (which may or may not be shuttering in the near future?) that pioneered New Nordic cuisine. Copenhagen’s pastries and coffee, too, are widely regarded as some of the finest in the world—inspired to bring back a bag of grounds for my parents from Prolog Coffee in the meatpacking district on a prior trip, I was overwhelmed by a vast and nuanced selection of beans sourced judiciously from around the world and roasted locally in nearby Refshaleøen.
But there’s something uniquely accessible, satisfying, comforting, and consistent about a Danish hot dog, an affordable foil to an otherwise very expensive dining city. Most will set you back just about 30 Danish kroner, or roughly $5. “Shouldn’t be more, and definitely shouldn’t be less,” says my boyfriend. It’s as reliably delightful as it is egalitarian.
