Notable Sandwiches #84: Hamdog
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where I, alongside my editor David Swanson, trip merrily through the baffling and mercurial document that is Wikipedia’s List of Notable Sandwiches, in alphabetical order. This week: a super random Australian food oddity, the hamdog.
First things first:
A hamdog is a hot dog wrapped in a hamburger, served on a bun. It was first patented, though probably not first invented, by an Australian.
It’s also possibly evidence that God’s grace has turned from the world, in a low-key way.
I asked some Australians and they said it’s not really a “thing” there and they haven’t eaten it. Someone explained that the best answer they have for this thing existing is “because Perth is weird,” but I have no idea what this means. Apparently Western Australia is “its own thing” and has a lot of oil and minerals, and wants to secede from the rest of Australia, and sort of, culturally, is like Australia’s Texas? I’m taking this thirdhand and also through the usual scrim of bafflement that enshrouds me as I consider this extremely faraway land.
Another thing to know is that this sandwich was originally pitched on Australia’s version of Shark Tank by some guy from Perth (“Perth is weird”) who also patented it, and, at least circa 2016, was pumping out hamdogs with custom-made buns shaped like this:
Informally, this sandwich has (obviously) been invented in parallel in the US and called different stuff, like the “hotdurger.” I can’t believe I had to type that word with my human hands.
Anyway, one version from Georgia is “a hot dog wrapped by a beef patty that's deep fried, covered with chili, cheese and onions and served on a hoagie bun. Oh yeah, it's also topped with a fried egg and two fistfuls of fries,” according to the AP circa 2005. This is, notably, four years before the Australian hamdog patent, although there’s no evidence that guy traveled the one zillion miles to from Australia to anywhere, let alone Decatur, Georgia. The American version was served in a bar called Mulligan’s which closed a year after that article was written, although no indicia tell me that this was actually due to coronary complications of any kind. Suck it, Australia: we did this first, and bigger, and stupider.
Because what the hamdog/hotdurger unholy-nitrate-tainted-abomination-cursed-by-God-and-man really is is stupid food.
I’m an avid consumer of the StupidFood subreddit and I kind of love it, even though I know for a fact that most of the videos—which feature thin white women with impeccable manicures making really, really disgusting casseroles or cakes and then grimacingly nibbling a single bite—are actually part of a viral-content-creation ring linked to a magician named Rick Lax. (Seriously, the excellent Ryan Broderick sussed it out.) Also, those delicate feminine hands massaging raw meat are definitely fetish content as well as ragebait; anything for clicks, even stupid food. The stupider the better.
The way I see it, getting mildly riled up about a really poorly executed donut is as good a use for my endorphins and sensibilities as any, and at least I’m not weighing in on like, famines or international relations that I don’t know anything about and can’t really be bothered to learn. I have enough on my mind. I can make fun of someone being paid to produce horrible casseroles and not really hurt anything except my own self-respect and possibly the dignity of Mankind as the image of its Creator. It’s a dumb, recursive loop, empty calories for the brain.
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In a similar fashion, the hamdog is a stunt. A weird Australian stunt that doesn’t involve a dingo, a kangaroo, a koala, a poisonous spider, surfing, being a former penal colony, or Marmite (Correction to readers: I was thinking of Vegemite, Marmite is British, they're both incomprehensible yeast splodge to me), so pretty much outside the box of everything I know about Australia. (I’m slightly afraid of Australia and overall glad it is at the absolute ends of the earth; every single animal there appears to be ready, willing and able to kill you; maybe not the koalas. But there’s also a huge, gaping, bizarro desert landscape at its center, mocking mankind’s puny attempts at taming it. It literally got colonized because it was the furthest place Britain could ship its convicts; plus they declared war on emus one time and the emus won). Either way the hamdog, American or Australian, is a stunt in a weird bun, and I look at it grimly, offering it little of myself except my scorn. Perth is weird, and every day we move further from God’s light.
That’s all for this week. I’m really sorry to every Australian, and, for the record, when I tried to do an Aussie accent for my boyfriend, he literally shook his head and said, “I’m sorry, baby.” So let my humiliation be your balm. Anyway, catch you later for a less profoundly stupid sandwich.
All my love,
Talia
