I'll be the first to admit that I simply don't know what this place is. I passed by it one time on the street and assumed it was a hot dog stand or newspaper stand. Then I turned back and did end up getting a hot dog here, so I thought I had guessed correctly. Then I looked the place up on Yelp later and found out that it's a place for jazz and dancing! Maybe it's all of them at the same time and I somehow managed to overlook a very obvious detail. I don't suppose that it's impossible for one place to serve all those purposes. In any case, it's only the sandwich here that I will be reviewing.
The booth is on Boulevard Saint-Michel, as is evidenced by the name, and is easy to spot because it's all green. I peered inside, looked at the menu, and ordered a hot dog sandwich. It was pretty cool because I got to watch the guy make the entire thing from scratch right in front of my eyes. I watched him quickly fry eggs (yeah really exciting, I know) and put them inside a baguette along with tomato slices, bits of shredded cheese, and two hot dogs (as in sausages). The baguette was just one normal long baguette cut down the middle vertically to make a sandwich. It's no cheap hot dog bun; this is the same kind of baguette you find in French bakeries, and it tastes just as good. Combine this with two normal hot dogs (because one of them just isn't long enough to fill that whole baguette!), that fried egg, that tomato, that cheese, and a masterpiece is created.
Okay, at least this whole thing was delicious to my American taste buds. Rather than a hot dog that just happens to use a baguette for the bun, it's quite the inverse. This is more like one of those fine sandwiches you get at French bakeries, but they just happen to use hot dog sausages for the meat. If that makes any sense at all. This place reminds me of those hot dogs you buy on the street in New York City, but Paris does it better! New York doesn't use French baguettes as the bun. I don't remember the exact price, but it was around seven or eight euros at the most. Pretty sweet deal, although you know that as with any other hot dog, you're inherently getting unhealthy food. My other concern here is that the guy didn't wash his hands or wear gloves, and he touched the food with his bare hands. Maybe that's considered the norm in France, but when you use those same hands to touch money, that's rather dirty. Still, it's hard to complain when a yummy sandwich over a foot long is handed to you like this. read more