DETROIT – Hockeytown is known for many things -- the automotive industry, the massive art and music scene, people leaving to work in North Carolina of all places -- but is there anything more iconic to Detroit’s food scene than the Coney Dog?
Sure, we have Detroit-style pizza, Faygo and Vernors, but isn’t it wild that Coney Dogs are associated and tied to us despite being named after a completely different area? In a completely different state in a completely different geographical region of the country?
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If you think that’s weird, wait till you learn that Coney Island is actually a peninsula attached to Long Island. None of this makes sense. Words don’t have to mean anything, I guess?
What is a Coney Island Hot Dog/Coney Dog?
Let’s start with the basics: A Coney Dog is a natural casing hot dog served with white onions, mustard and the titular coney sauce, which resembles a thin, well-seasoned beanless chili. Coney sauce has its own unique spice profile. There are variants, beyond this, but this is the foundation upon which the Dog of Coney is built.
This is different from a Michigan hot dog, which is a steamed beef hot dog served with a meat sauce. This sauce is not a chili, nor does it have any Greek influence. This New York specialty may have been influenced by the Coney Dog, but wet meats on a hot dog does not a Coney make.
A chili dog is a hot dog served with chili, typically with beans. It may have cheese. Basic.
The term “Coneys” can be used to refer to both the Coney Dog or the Coney Island restaurants that serve them.
Metro Detroit’s Coney Island restaurants are typically Greek-American-owned places that serve American diner and breakfast foods but can also serve Greek salads, gyros, Lemon-rice soup, kebobs, saganaki (Opa!), pita-wrapped sandwiches and more.
A Tale of Two Coneys
After immigrating from Greece in 1903, Constantine “Gust” Keros opened a hot dog cart in Detroit in 1910. He topped them with saltsa kima, a spiced Greek ground beef sauce and called them Coney Dogs, inspired by the hot dogs he had in Coney Island after he traveled to New York through Ellis Island.
As the auto industry grew, so did the demand for more Coney Dogs. The cart turned into American Coney Island in 1917.
Keros would eventually bring his brother over from Greece to help run the restaurant. His brother would eventually break off from American Coney Island and start his own in 1936 -- Lafayette Coney Island.
Between the two is a collective 195 years of Coney greatness.
It all goes back to the Keros
While many people claim to be the creator of the Coney Dog and the timeline can be fuzzy of what came first, few have had as big of an impact as the Keros family. Bill and Gust Keros basically defined what the Detroit staple has been for the last 100 years.
It doesn’t just stop with them. The nephews of Bill and Gust Keros went on to start the Kerby’s Koney Island chain of restaurants. It’s still owned by the Keros family.
As a family-owned business, the owners hired their cousins, Pete and Leo Stassinopoulos. The Stassinopoulus brothers would go on to found Leo’s Coney Island.
But why Detroit?
Due to the influx of Greek immigrants at the time and a booming auto industry -- Detroit’s population quadrupled between 1900 and 1920 -- the Keros brothers were in the right place at the right time to feed the growing blue-collar workforce that called Detroit home.
But it wasn’t just Detroit. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, there were thousands of Greek immigrants coming into the United States and the Keros brothers weren’t the only ones who thought of combining the American hot dog with their ancestral flavors.
George Todoroff, a Macedonian immigrant, started the Jackson Coney Island in 1914. This 24-hour restaurant was located next to the Jackson Train Station on Michigan Avenue and became popular enough that it led to the creation of Todoroff Foods, which still operates 110 years later. Kalamazoo is home to a Coney Island that has been operating since 1915.
While they exist elsewhere, Detroit just had the right soil conditions for the Coney Dog plant to flourish. It’s a symbol of the city, just as much as the Model T or Motown music. It’s a Detroit tradition that grew with the rise of its workforce, but you don’t need to be on the assembly line to appreciate it.
Besides, does anything go better with a Vernors than a Coney?