Downtown Charleston HDJ Death Match Round 3

Yesterday's winner, The Fresh Seafood Company - a small locally owned establishment - today takes on a corporate giant: Dairy Queen.

Now first, all Dairy Queens are not created equal. There two major divisions, the first being Dairy Queen Brazier which is a brand within a brand and sell products unique to that sub-brand. Then there are regular old DQs that mostly sell corporate's dairy products but are left to figure out hot dogs, french fries and other hot foodstuff on their own. In my view, the regular DQs do a much better job on WVHDs than the corporate-directed Braziers. If you are interested in reading the many different reviews of various DQs that WVHotDogs.com has done over the years, follow this link.

The Town Center Mall DQ is not a Brazier outlet, but interestingly enough they still seem to use the standard corporate issue Coney Sauce on their hot dogs. Now this stuff can be doctored to taste OK, but by itself it's rather bland. TCDQ does not doctor theirs at all.  The slaw they serve is standard food service stuff that is tasteless, coarsely chopped and kind of tough.

New England Style Split Top bun fans will like TCDQ's buttered and grilled bread, but this is not a standard WVHD offering so they win no points here.

Today's death match was really no match at all. The Fresh Seafood Company's hot dog is so far superior to TCDQ that it's like they are not even in the same class. We'll see how it fares tomorrow when we walk down the mall when we go to another ice cream joint that sells hot dogs, Maggie Moos.