'World's Most Expensive Hot Dog' Goes On Sale For $100

It’s difficult to get noticed these days in the increasingly competitive world of catering. But it always helps if you can come up with some sort of gimmick to separate you from the chaff, especially in the cut throat world of fast food and painfully fashionable food trucks.

Burgers have been done to death, even though the London food literati never seem to tire of twatting about them. But hot dogs? Well, there’s still some mileage to be had out of the good old dog isn’t there - that great American sporting tradition of stuffing your face with ice cold beer and something pink and meat-like in a roll?

At least, one restaurant owner in Vancouver, Canada, hopes so after launching what he claims is the world’s most expensive hot dog - at a ridiculous price of $100 (£67).

So just what do you put in a hot dog to command such a ludicrous price tag? Truffles? Foie gras? Caviar? Sea cucumbers poached in Armagnac? Endangered, satellite-tracked southern river terrapin? How about flesh from the world’s last bluefin tuna?

No, they’ve all been done to death.

The current purveyor of the world’s most expensive hot dog is US celebrity chef Stephen Bruce, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. His $69 Haute Dog served at Serendipity 3 restaurant in New York comprises a beef sausage grilled in white truffle oil, and served on a pretzel roll with duck foie gras, and caramelised Vidalia onions.

But Dougie Dog owner Dougie Luv says his foot-long "mouth-wateringly delicious" Dragon Dog is the first sausage in a bap to sell for three figures.

The gimmick? It contains a bratwurst infused with 100-year-old Louis XIII cognac, which costs more than $2,000 a bottle, as well as Kobe beef seared in olive and truffle oil, fresh lobster, and a ‘secret’ picante sauce.

Luv said he wanted to come up with something "super tasty and high-end" that stays true to the traditional identity of the hot dog. Oh, and to get into the Guinness Book of Records and attract a whole load of PR, of course.

Just think if the brilliantly-named Joey "Jaws" Chestnut, winner of the World Hot Dog Eating Contest’s mustard-yellow champion's belt for the fifth year running, got hold of them. He’d get through $6,200 worth in 10 minutes. Only in America...

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