Page HDJ - Woods Market

Obviously for most West Virginians, the first question that we have to answer is "where in the @#?! is Page?" The answer to that is easy: Between Montgomery and Oak Hill. The REAL question should be "How in the @#?! did you find this place?" The answer to that questions is that a small email campaign waged by Fayette County readers persuaded me that this little place in this little place that is between two other slightly larger little places just might have a great hot dog. So I had bookmarked it and the first time I found myself in Mongummy at lunch time I decided to hop over Deepwater Mountain and check it out.

As you can see from the picture, from the outside this is not a place that you might expect to find hot dogs, and without the aforementioned letters from readers I am positive that I would have never darkened the doorway of this establishment. Not that it looks terribly scary, it's just that it looks like every small community market I have ever been in and I felt certain that I knew exactly how it would smell inside, and I knew that the people that worked there would recognize that I was not local and watch every move I made in the store - which was exactly what happened when I went in (every time I go into one of these places I feel like the guy working there just might be on the news someday, ala Norman Bates).

But there are some rewards that are worth the risk and the promise of a good WVHD is worth a considerable amount of emotional discomfort, if not bodily harm. I'm not sure that this hot dog, though, was quite worth the risk.

Don't get me wrong, the hot dog was not without merit. My biggest complaint is that the chili was sparsely applied - so sparse that I really couldn't tell much about its taste except that it is heavy on onions. The slaw was finely chopped and wonderful tasting, but also served sparingly. The bun was nicely steamed and overall it was a good Utilitarian Dog, but hardly worth the trip to Page - even from Montgomery.

I'll rate Woods Market's hot dogs at a generous 3.5 Weenies, simply for being an outpost of Weeniedom on the rural Fayette County frontier. If you are in the neighborhood, stop and try it.