Gassaway Dairy Queen

Another case of a HDJ that makes us wait until Spring, I had waited since last November for the the Gassaway Dairy Queen to reopen because I had heard from readers that is was the best place to get a hot dog in all of Braxton County. One of those readers emailed me recently to let me know it had opened and so I scheduled a trip with my wife to her favorite place, Everything Fiesta, and timed my departure from Charleston to insure I was passing the I79 Sutton/Gassaway exit just about lunchtime.

Finding the DQ is no problem. It sits just before the bridge into downtown Gassaway about 3 miles from the interstate, and it looks just like a typical Dairy Queen. Fortunately its hot dogs don't taste like typical DQ hot dogs.

My reader told me that this DQ doesn't adhere to the DQ chili norm, and that was evident from the first whiff. DQ "Coney Sauce" has a distinctive odor, er I mean aroma, and this hot dog gave off a wonderful bouquet. It was ulfactorily evident that tomatoes were a big part of this chili, and the color made it clear that it had been carefully and properly cooked. Little specks of red floating in the sauce made me think there were real chilis involved in the production of this stuff, not just chili powder. The texture and taste of the chili was as nice as the smell.

The slaw was rather coarsely chopped, but the cabbage was tender so it didn't matter. A nicely sweet taste was the only flavor I could detect. Pretty good, especially sitting on a perfectly steamed bun like this one.

I have to mention the weenie: It was small. The diameter was much smaller than average, but since it made room for more of the scrumptious chili and slaw, I didn't miss the heft much. It tasted fine and seemed to be grilled.

Oh, by the way, "everything" includes ketchup, mustard, chil, slaw and onions (enough with the ketchup already!).

Overall the Gassaway DQ gets a 4 1/2 Weenie rank.