Saussages & Dogs in downtown TO streets for $1&$2

[Blunt]

Ok.. guys, this one is a hot one.
Full Size vendor Hot Dogs and Saussages are availible at Queen and Spadina for $1 & $2. These are the full sized hot dogs and sassauges, not the dinky ones you get a ikea. I've never seen the prices this low for the last 10 years.

There are 2 vendors on the corner with full condiments (hhmmmm.. bacon bits).

So fill up on your street-eats people! :razz:

[rupture]

Mmmm pigeon dogs! :D

[mic2074]

wow... the hotdog vendor's price cutting war has come down to this... Great for us.

There used to be this guy in one of those trucks outside City Hall with $1.50 hotdogs, and $2.00 sausages - but you're appetite goes away after looking at the fat sweaty guy that's cooking it and handing it to you.

[rupture]

wow... the hotdog vendor's price cutting war has come down to this... Great for us.

There used to be this guy in one of those trucks outside City Hall with $1.50 hotdogs, and $2.00 sausages - but you're appetite goes away after looking at the fat sweaty guy that's cooking it and handing it to you.

The fry trucks outside City Hall aren't bad, I would probably rate them with some of the best chips in the city!

The deal around those venders: $3.50, which nabs you a full sized hot dog and side of fries smothered with gravy (however much you want).

[wild]

gotta love street meat!

[Shaner]

Nothing like a juicy smog sausage.
Best sausages I've ever had.

I eat at least 2-3 every time I go to Toronto, even if it's only for a few hours.

[q_hada]

I've never seen the prices this low for the last 10 years.


You know, I've passed by that corner a few times over the last couple of years and seen those prices every time. Maybe they had specials every now and then? (I'm assuming you know the area better than me since I'm not often at that corner)

edit: oh yeah, and I'm with rupture on the fry trucks outside city hall (and sometimes outside the convention centre) - they're awesome

[Blunt]

You know, I've passed by that corner a few times over the last couple of years and seen those prices every time. Maybe they had specials every now and then? (I'm assuming you know the area better than me since I'm not often at that corner)

edit: oh yeah, and I'm with rupture on the fry trucks outside city hall (and sometimes outside the convention centre) - they're awesome

I've never seen the prices at $2 for a sassauge and $1 for a hotdog. For the last little while, prices were creaping up to $3.50 for a sassuage around town. The other low times I saw was sassauges at UofT for $2.50, but that was more than 5 years ago.

[BinaryJay]

What the heck is a "sassage"?

This deal is just in time for valentines day, in case the valentines meal at ikea is too expensive for you.

[chunkylover53]

I remember reading somewhere that hotdog stands are the only legally allowed outdoor food vendors (excluding fry trucks) in Toronto, since the food is pre-cooked. That's really too bad.

[Mystix]

the prices has been like that for the past year afaik. Also they are there 24hr a day, they have two guys at a stand running shifts. Theres 3 stands selling it at this price, so you get to pick your own "poison" :D

[Div]

Its close to lunch time and I have a sudden craving for street meat.

[boonjaca]

Although I haven't bought a hot dog or sausage in awhile, that's a really good price. The last time I bought was was sometime last year and I paid around $3-3.50 for a sausage at King/John street during lunch.

[gamovafan]

I remember reading somewhere that hotdog stands are the only legally allowed outdoor food vendors (excluding fry trucks) in Toronto, since the food is pre-cooked. That's really too bad.

I read it in the Toronto Star. They also mentioned some girl who had her own tatar stand or something like that but she was paying a lot of fees and didn't want to do it anymore.

[akito925]

humm I'll keep that in mind... $1 hotdog.. I work close to queen street..

[Khryn]

Not to crap on the thread or anything, I was quite enticed myself a couple months ago when I saw the $1 / $2 prices from those vendors on the corner of Spadina and Queen. Needless to say, I have never had a worse sausage ever, it tasted like it would be a $2 sausage that's for sure. Perhaps it was an off day, my wife had the $1 hotdog and her experience was no better, she said it tasted like cardboard.

Get what you pay for I suppose, just thought I would throw that out there for what it's worth.

[kyfe]

they're called winter dogs, what they don't sell from the year prior goes into the freezer and is sold again next year.

kind of gross when you think about it

[ji2o0k]

hmmm I know right outside of Robarts Library at UofT St.George, there is the one hot dog vendor (with a blue tarp to protect against the wind) who was selling Italian sausages for $1.50. That was a few years back too.

But she was the only one, the rest on St.George had $2 sausages, so I think these prices have been like that for a while.

[Blunt]

My saussage was fine yesterday. My friend's hotdog was same as any other vendor dog.

Maybe the cardboard-dog was actually a VeggieDog.
Now that stuff tastes like cardboard to me..

[Menace]

Great price but bad for your health. No wonder we see so many fat people these days.

[alkaholikc]

at my gf campus(Humber) they are 2.50 / 3.00... and they dont even have all the toppings! 1$ hotdogs are a nice deal if your on the run DT.

[Fantaz]

lol, hot deal!

[batcave]

A message from the chefs at Queen & Spadina... :razz:
http://images15.fotki.com/v11/photos/4/43873/169470/DSCF1333-vi.jpg

[Veinless]

A message from the chefs at Queen & Spadina... :razz:


Ahh.. now which one is Dibbler?

[j27lee]

What the heck is a "sassage"?
A sausage in boston.... :lol:

james

[CHE]

Great sausages and dogs...usually pick one up after catching a show at the Horseshoe Tavern.

[sstackho]

A couple of comments on previous posts:

- Yes, the laws for street food in Toronto are very restrictive. I believe they actually contain the term "pre-cooked cylindrical-shaped meat". Getting a license to sell anything else is difficult. That is very unfortunate.

- I believe most of the downtown vendors get their hot dogs and sausages from two main outlets. I don't expect there's much variation in quality. That's why they all have the same types of sausages.

There was an interesting article on the hot dog war in the Globe back in August.

Fear, loathing and cut-rate sausages
CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
712 words
27 August 2005
The Globe and Mail
M1
English
All material copyright Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. or its licensors. All rights reserved.

They're mining diamonds at Queen and Spadina, or running guns, for all the intrigue on the street. There's talk of sabotage and customer-poaching, they murmur readily about betrayal. The situation has become so intense, police have even been asked to watch the corner.

There's a hot-dog war on Queen West. It's good for the customers, at least.

Spiridon Karagianis — Spiro with the long grey hair and the snap-happy tongs — dropped his prices a couple of months ago. Hot dogs dipped from the standard street rate of $2 to $1, and he slashed sausages from $3 to $2. (He killed the free olives and corn relish so he could compete.)

The friendly-looking woman at the next cart, who declines to give her name, followed. Her stand sits less than an arm's length away, and she runs another around the corner. Their signs, like their tempers, are almost one on top of the other.

“Hi there!” she shouts to a wavering mark. “Hi there, honey! Sausage? Yes, please.”

The customer looks confused. When Spiro's guy shouts for the same customer, the woman at the next cart complains. “See! See what he's doing?” she says.

You decide between them for different reasons. She is clearly the friendlier one, though the more aggressive of the two. She's pretty, and she smiles. She sounds cheery with her shout-outs, even under all the edge.

She'll tell you that her hot dogs are better. “Everyone knows this is more delicious, more tasty,” she tells customers. It's probably fair to say, too, that she's right.

But Spiro, 50, also has his charms. His cart offers organic sausages (in addition to regular), and he knows a lot of the old-timers. He's been at this all his life. Spiro's father was in the street vending business: popcorn, candy apples, chestnuts, in the days before city hall's public-health freaks deemed everything but hot dogs unfit for the city's streets.

Spiro says he's the guy who brought good condiments to Toronto's street dog trade — even three types of grated cheese and pineapple chunks once upon a time. Before Spiro came along with his hot-dog stand, you could only get them boiled, he says. And now, the war.

This isn't supposed to happen. City regulations dictate that hot-dog stands must keep 25 metres apart, and there's a moratorium on new permits downtown.

But these are prime spots, grandfathered from before the regulations came into play.

There used to be no McDonald's here. Once, there was enough business to go around.

The woman with the edge to her voice says she and her husband have been working this spot for nine years.

She says she used to lease the permit for the location for $18,000 a year, though it isn't exactly clear from whom, or where she gets the permit from now. (The city charges between $2,160 and $3,970 for a downtown hot-dog permit, if you can get one, though the private market, apparently, thinks some spots are worth much more.)

Spiro says volume's up now. It's up enough, he says, that he's making more money than he did before.

She can hardly turn a profit, she complains, though she says she'll hold out for as long as it takes.

And the claims of sabotage? The betrayals? They're both too busy to make any of it clear. Spiro is more eager to boast of his history in this business — he used to run a dozen carts — than to talk about the hot-dog war. He doesn't even want it called a price war. “Everybody lowers their prices on merchandise,” he says. He points at the stores across the street. “Look at that, 30 per cent off, 50 per cent off. That doesn't make it a war, does it?”

As for her, she's got customers to chase. She taps her tongs on the side of her cart, and shouts out, “Hi there! Sausage? Hot dog? Hi honey!”

[7jai]

damn, those italian + german + polish sausages or so DAMN GOOD OMFG! *drools*

[ah bao]

HOTDOG HOTDOG.... man... after reading this i'm craving for some street meat....


NICE.... :cheesygri

[Tosh]

Street Meat

[BeaverLiquor]

mmm gristle and endtrails....don't know why north americans get "grossed out" at some other cultural food when they eat this....and chain fastfood burgers

[chlorine]

I wish they sold Gyros, kebabs and stuff like that on the streets ... when I was in London, Ontario, I had that kind of street food... it wasn't like that great but I'm sure some ppl can make it good... basically would be nice to have a taste of the danforth, but spread out across downtown t.o.

[weedb0y]

back in new york, i had the best biryani at a street food stall at manhattan

[sstackho]

Dogged Determination (http://www.thismagazine.ca/issues/2005/01/doggeddetermination.php)

Why Toronto’s hot dog hegemony has it in for anything but warmed-over wieners

BY Jessica Johnston

After returning home from a trip around the world in 2000 and being amazed by the abundance and variety of foods for sale on the streets of South America, Europe and Asia, Katie Rabinowicz was inspired to start Fork in the Road, a pedal-powered food cart that would sell a range of world food from Laotian rice in banana leaves to Mexican masa cakes on the streets of downtown Toronto.

She knew it would be tough, but she never guessed it would be impossible. While kabobs, soups and curries may spill from the streets of many of the world’s cities, Toronto is ruled by a hot dog hegemony. And unfortunately for anyone who would be excited to buy a samosa or a salad on the street, the wieners have the law on their side.

Street food is governed by provincial health regulations that lay out the standards for handling, storing and serving food. Under these rules, all catering vehicles and “mobile preparation premises,” or food carts, must conform to restaurant standards for food-storage temperature and hygiene. That means they must have a supply of hot and cold running water under pressure, and refrigeration facilities, among other things.

Exceptions to the rules are granted to few, and those include stands that sell only cold drinks, fries, packaged ice cream, roasted nuts, popcorn or the infamous “pre-cooked meat products in the form of wieners or similar products to be served on a bun.”

“I tried to wade through all the ridiculous bylaws and I got different answers from different people in the city,” Rabinowicz says. “It doesn’t seem like there’s a coherent policy around it, except that they really don’t want people selling anything besides hot dogs.”

Unable to get a vending permit (which are no longer being issued for downtown Toronto) or permission to vend her world food from a cart, Rabinowicz looked at selling on private property, considered getting a permit to vend from a truck, and even thought about elevating her puffed rice masala to cult status to take advantage of a little-known bylaw that allows religious groups to sell more than street meat. “I was thinking of coming up with some religion,” she says half seriously. Instead, she vends her arapas and sticky rice balls solely at farmers markets and special events where health regulations are interpreted differently.

According to Susanne Burkhardt, a registered public health inspector who has prepared a report on street food for the Toronto Food Policy Council, the city’s public health department doesn’t have the resources to encourage innovation in sidewalk snacks. There are non-wiener foods that could potentially be sold within the current framework, but she admits it’s difficult for vendors to figure out what those might be.

That complicated framework needs to change, says Wayne Roberts, project coordinator for the Toronto Food Policy Council. “[It’s part of] Anglo-American heritage to make 5,000 rules about something, very specific rules, and the impact of this on food safety has often been to eliminate small producers.” Roberts hopes that Burkhardt’s report will open up a discussion of this issue and lead to some collaborative solutions.

One of the obstacles to efforts to diversify Toronto’s street food culture is that most people are not aware that there is even a problem—after all, hot dogs are cheap and portable and a defining part of North American society. But as Burkhardt points out, “street food isn’t just about food—it’s about culture, it’s about economics, it’s about urban life. It’s about lots of different things. It’s about expressing diversity, it’s about vibrant street scenes.”
*

Jessica Johnston is a Toronto-based freelance writer and editor and regular This Magazine copyeditor. She has been known to eat food off the street.

[RDog]

Hasn't anyone ever seen those expose's on street meat vendors and their various hygiene and storage practices??? Granted, those are worst-case scenarios but just because someone has a license to sell food on a corner doesn't mean anyone is inspecting them regularly. If it were free food it still wouldn't be worth it to me... but if you trust it, more power to you.

[swmc]

Ok.. guys, this one is a hot one.
Full Size vendor Hot Dogs and Saussages are availible at Queen and Spadina for $1 & $2. These are the full sized hot dogs and sassauges, not the dinky ones you get a ikea. I've never seen the prices this low for the last 10 years.

There are 2 vendors on the corner with full condiments (hhmmmm.. bacon bits).

So fill up on your street-eats people! :razz:

Hmm...many replies seem to circle around what they really wanted to say: Great deal, but an old one. That's why people were posting the old Toronto Star and Globe and Mail articles.

At City Hall, there is a truck that comes by every so often offering $2 sausages. He doesn't come everyday though.

Being a queen street regular, you learn the answers to some things such as, where do the hot dog vendors relieve themselves?

food for thought. :twisted:

I'll go start a new thread about cheap stuff you can find at a dollar store.

[B40]

Wow full size sausage for $1...thanks!

[yuwing8]

the dog venders at u of t have hot dogs for $2.50 (in front of SidneySmith). major rip off in comparison to this deal :(

[Azxster]

Ernie's Hot Dog (Yonge/Dundas) - Infront of Ryerson
$2 for Hot Dog w/ Melted Cheese

[nano]

nothing like street meat :D

[creature]

Dogged Determination (http://www.thismagazine.ca/issues/2005/01/doggeddetermination.php)

Street food is governed by provincial health regulations that lay out the standards for handling, storing and serving food. Under these rules, all catering vehicles and “mobile preparation premises,” or food carts, must conform to restaurant standards for food-storage temperature and hygiene. That means they must have a supply of hot and cold running water under pressure, and refrigeration facilities, among other things.

Exceptions to the rules are granted to few, and those include stands that sell only cold drinks, fries, packaged ice cream, roasted nuts, popcorn or the infamous “pre-cooked meat products in the form of wieners or similar products to be served on a bun.”

This is not accurate. Mobile preparation premises (including hot dog carts) are only exempted from the washroom requirements of the Ontario Food Premises Regulation. All hazardous foods (i.e. hot dogs) must be kept at 4C or less. That means there must be some sort of refrigeration unit or a cooler with ice packs. The ONLY difference between hot dog carts and other mobile preparation premises is that operators of hot dog carts can prepare hot dogs out in the open, while others must prepare their food in the confinement of their food truck and all windows, doors, etc. must be screened.

“It doesn’t seem like there’s a coherent policy around it, except that they really don’t want people selling anything besides hot dogs.”

I don't know how accurate this is either. The provincial regulation does not set out any restriction regarding what kind of food people can and cannot sell in a mobile preparation premises. Maybe there's some weird municipal by-law.

Instead, she vends her arapas and sticky rice balls solely at farmers markets and special events where health regulations are interpreted differently.

I am surprised the local health unit even allows her to sell those items at the farmers market, assuming she prepared them from her home. Good luck, there's a provincial group currently working on putting in place more stringent standards for foods that are sold farmers' market.