Title: Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs
Author: Jamie Loftus
Dates Read: May 30 - June 11, 2023
Bottlecap Rating (out of 5):
How can you take a fun, quirky topic like hot dogs and turn it into a painful, political slog around the country?
I preordered Raw Dog, excited for a memoir that revolved around hunting down the country's most famous dogs and exploring regional quirks and toppings. A pandemic road trip! Hot dogs! Funny female author! There was so much potential for this to be so good. I desperately wanted to love this book, but in the end, I couldn't even like it.
Loftus' journey is absolutely joyless. For someone who allegedly loves hot dogs enough to call herself a Hot Dogger, her exhaustion with her own project hits almost immediately. She sets up the doomed trip immediately by sharing that her traveling companion is a soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend, then drags readers back into the political hellscape that was Summer 2021. Together, we relive the tension, regional divides, and pandemic anxiety through the author's lens of sodium-induced self-loathing. She overcompensates for the misery with a level of vulgarity far beyond what you'd naturally expect in a book about hot dogs written by a comedian.
I appreciated the regional flavors, toppings and preparations for some of the hot dogs Loftus explored, and learning the history behind them. She shared some endearing and quirky anecdotes about creators of various concoctions and establishment owners, as if they were roadside attractions themselves. Those moments made the book readable, but couldn't save the story.
There are some great recommendations for stellar dog stands. In interviews, Loftus has said she enjoys talking to people about "their" hot dogs - what they put on theirs, what they grew up with, what makes it home to them. I would have liked to see her explore this trip and this season of her life through that kind of lens. That would have helped connect the stories to her journey, and perhaps to this reader as well.
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