The Hot Dog
• The year opens with Txikito’s new lunch menu, which includes a “perrito noisette”— a grilled brown-buttered hot dog in natural casing.
• Filipino fast-food phenomenon Jollibee opens in Queens; there are lines down the block for dishes like spaghetti in hot-dog-studded red sauce.
• Fatty Crab Upper West Side serves the $13 “Fatty Dog,” a housemade XO sausage packed with pork shoulder and fatback and topped with XO sauce, Thai chilies, pickled radish, cucumber, cilantro, and aïoli.
• It’s revealed that Daniel Boulud’s downtown-downscale project, DBGB, will serve a $9 “DBGB Dog”; it comes with sautéed onions, mustard, ketchup, the housemade “299” relish, and fries.
• PDT adds Tailor’s housemade huitlacoche dog to its menu, then Elettaria introduces a housemade corn dog. Elettaria’s brunch menu also includes a “sloppy dog,” topped with two fried eggs, baked beans, and bacon.
• The Upper West Side Shake Shack serves corn dogs for the first time to celebrate Memorial Day.
• Chicago’s famous Superdawg sues former lounge owner Danny Omari for opening the comic-themed SuperDog on Macdougal Street. After a court order to change the name, Omari decides to serve his patented fresh-fruit dog (with blueberry jam!) under the name Super Hot Dog.
• Michael Psilakis opens a gastropub, Gus & Gabriel, serving housemade hot dogs, two for $10.95. The Chicago-style version is topped with pickles, relish, tomato, and peppers. In Sunset Park, the pizza and hot-dog trends converge in Sliceria’s “Wurstel Pizza”—Nathan’s dogs on a classic Neapolitan pie.
• At Bark Hot Dogs, chef-owners Joshua Sharkey and Brandon Gillis get their dogs from an Austrian sausage-maker upstate, and baste them in housemade smoked lard butter. The sauerkraut is aged in oak barrels, and the beans are of the heirloom variety.
• Water Taxi Beach’s new Governors Island outpost serves a bacon-wrapped hot dog.
The Hamburger
• Txikito’s introduces a Basque-inspired double burger destined to become a favorite.
• Butcher to the stars Pat LaFrieda introduces the Black Label hamburger; it costs $26 at Minetta Tavern; it’s instantly a critical darling.
• Bloomingdale’s debuts an in-house burger joint, Flip, that allows you to choose the ingredients, right down to the blend of the meat.
• Danny Omari opens Food Fight, a slider joint on Macdougal Street.
• Terrance Brennan’s casual downtown restaurant Bar Artisanal opens with two burgers: one a blend of brisket, chuck, and short rib, the other a lamb-shoulder-and-merguez-sausage mix stuffed with goat cheese on an olive bun.
• After it relaunches with a LaFrieda-supplied meat, Delicatessen’s best-selling items are the cheeseburger sliders (200 orders per week) and the Deli Chz Burger (240 orders per week).
• Shortly before debuting his Dijon-smeared Frenchie burger at DBGB Kitchen & Bar, Daniel Boulud says, “American mustard is not good enough for hamburgers!”
• Marquee honcho Noah Tepperberg opens Avenue, a “gastro-lounge”; it has $14 Kobe-beef sliders on the menu.
• The La Cense Beef Truck roves midtown serving all-natural grass-fed Angus steak burgers at $7 a pop.
• Michael Psilakis’s Gus & Gabriel, Gastropub serves a “fried egg, bacon, onion rings, and Gruyère burger,” among others.
• Months before opening, meatpacking-district restaurant Abe & Arthur’s throws a party, July in the Hamptons, to preview its top-secret burger—revealing only that it will be a blend of three beef cuts.
• Shake Shack announces that it will open in Nolita.
• After touring the city’s other burger joints, the owner of Fort Greene’s 67 Burger opens Black Shack. The name is a play on White Castle.
The Pizza
• Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery opens Co. where his renowned no-knead-bread method is repurposed for pizza dough and served with toppings like ham and Gruyère.
• Birdbath Bakery begins using its pretzel-croissant dough for handheld pizzas with housemade tomato sauce and Joe’s Dairy mozzarella.
• Neapolitan chef and sometime rapper Alberto Polo Cretara opens an Italian bakery, Farinella, in Tribeca, where he bakes four-foot-long pies sold by the slice.
• Newcomer Ignazio’s opens a cobblestone’s throw from the venerable Grimaldi’s of Dumbo and offers thin-sliced Sicilian pies with fancy toppings like lobster, baby dandelion, and chicory.
• The team behind Aurora opens a Roman-inspired trattoria, Emporio. Ingredients that go into the wood-burning oven include guanciale, Tuscan kale, and Pecorino cream.
• Silvano Marchetto’s Scuderia, across the street from Da Silvano, serves personal pizzas topped with fig jam, bluecheese, and speck.
• Bar Artisanal’s wood-burning oven turns out French-style “pissaladières”—one is loaded with duck gizzard, confit, egg, pancetta, and frisée. Williamsburg pie joint Motorino gets its liquor license—beverage director Amnon Lourie plans to serve “pizza wines” from Tuscany and Champagne.
• Tonda may be the first pizzeria to have its own trailer. The $30,000 oven is artfully filmed in black and white by owner Bob Giraldi, the man behind Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” video.
• L’asso nods to famed Midwood pizzaiolo Dom De Marco of Di Fara, via its Big D, a slice consisting of regular mozzarella, mozzarella di bufala, and grated Parmesan with tomato and basil.
• At Veloce Pizzeria, Sara Jenkins of Porchetta starts making twelve-inch pan-baked crusts from Caputo flour and potatoes.
• The owner of beloved pizzeria Luzzo’s gives his blessing (and his top-secret recipe) to Saraghina, the first Bed-Stuy pizzeria to serve a $15 pie.
• Kesté introduces the portofolio (or wallet) pie, a portable Neapolitan pizza meant to be folded twice for eating on the go.
• Bar Luna opens with Tom Valenti protégé Jacques Belanger in the kitchen and a $13 white-truffle pizza on the menu.
• Staten Island pizzeria Valducci’s debuts a pizza truck in Chelsea, with its signature Sicilian pie—cheese under sauce.
• Not content to have just one wildly popular pizzeria, Motorino owner Mathieu Palombino acquires the former Una Pizza Napoletana in the East Village and its Naples-built Acunto wood-burning oven.
• Brazilian chain Cone Pizza opens in Queens; its custom machines shape imported dough into a cone, which is then stuffed with goopy ingredients.
• Pure Food & Wine introduces raw-food pizzettes—vegan-friendly varieties made with almond-rosemary crust.