As a lover of hot dogs, I’m ashamed to admit that until recently I had never visited a Wienerschnitzel restaurant. I was aware of their existence but had never stopped by to try the food. Despite being the “World’s Largest Hot Dog Chain”, Wienerschnitzel only has 3 locations in Washington State (Everett, Fife, and Spokane). After purchasing an official Wienerschnitzel holiday sweater I decided that it was time to investigate their menu.
The History
Before I dive into the review, let me provide a backstory of the Wienerschnitzel fast food chain. It was founded in 1961 by John Galardi. He was 23 at the time and had been working at a restaurant called “Taco Tía” in Southern California. His boss at Taco Tía eventually went on to start another taco chain called “El Taco” which had a spot open up for lease next door. He suggested that John open a restaurant there, as long as he didn’t sell tacos. This would prove to be important because his boss happened to be Glen Bell, and Glen’s next restaurant would be called “Taco Bell“. Ever heard of it?
John and Glen collaborated on the restaurant concept and agreed that hot dogs were an up and coming market that wouldn’t compete directly with Glen’s taco chain. However, if you think abstractly, isn’t a hot dog sort of a taco? Anyway, it was actually Glen’s wife that came up with the name “Wienerschnitzel”. She was flipping through the pages of a cookbook and thought it was catchy. If you’re familiar with German cuisine you’ll recognize that name as a dish made with fried breaded veal cutlets, something that Wienerschnitzel never intended to sell. Another head-scratcher is that the official name was “Der Wienerschnitzel” until 1977. That’s not even correct German (should have been “Das Wienerschnitzel”).
So, Wienerschnitzel was always a bit…funny. The buildings used a distinctive red and yellow A-Frame design with a drive-thru splitting the building in half. They also leaned into a tragic hot dog mascot called “The Delicious One”, or “T.D.O.” for a stretch of advertising campaigns. The poor hot dog kept finding himself in horrifying social situations where people tried to eat him and he’d run away screaming. I guess it worked because Wienerschnitzel is still the world’s largest hot dog chain and sells more than 120 million hot dogs a year.
The Review
I tried 5 different menu items on my trip. I’ll provide a ranking next to each item just to give some context for my comparative enjoyment.
- Plain French Fries
- Junkyard Dog (chili cheese dog with grilled onions and fries on top)
- Chicago Dog
- Chili Cheese Fries Burrito
- Chili Cheeseburger
Plain French Fries – Nothing too groundbreaking here. They serve a 6mm straight cut skinless fry that didn’t get above a pale yellow. There wasn’t a lot of potato flavor, but it was crispy, hot, and heavily seasoned. It’s a basic french fry, but they prepared it well and it serves as a reasonable base for their loaded fries and some other menu items. 6/10
Junkyard Dog – I could have just gotten the chili cheese dog, but I love grilled onions and I thought the fries would add some texture. That turned out to be wishful thinking because I literally received about 3 french fries on the dog. Moving past their fry stinginess, the default hot dog was salty and tasted cheap. That’s because it is cheap. You can upgrade to a premium dog, but I stayed with the mixed meat entry-level unit. It was fine, but not a lot of texture or distinguishable flavor on its own. The chili was terrific, though. They use a proprietary beanless chili sauce that’s the perfect texture for a chili dog. It’s pretty smooth, but is spotted with small chunks of hamburger meat. It’s not spicy, but it’s heavily spiced. The cheese and onions were nice compliments, and all around I thought this was pretty tasty. 8/10
Chicago Dog – I’m very particular about my Chicago Dogs, and I knew that this one would fall a bit short. To their credit, Wienerschnitzel did better than I thought they could given the complexity of what a Chicago Dog entails. There was no poppy seed bun, but their standard bun was soft and warm. The hot dog was fine, but a far cry from a proper snapping Vienna Beef dog. There was a dill pickle spear, raw white onions, sweet relish, sport peppers, tomato slices, and celery salt. So, a passable Chicago Dog. It tasted fine and if I didn’t have such a high benchmark already I would have scored it higher. 6/10
Chili Cheese Fries Burrito – At first this seemed totally random, but the more I thought about it the more sense it made. Chili cheese fries are great, but incredibly difficult to eat in the car. You know what’s easy to eat in the car? A burrito. So, why not put chili cheese fries inside of a tortilla? This was only $1.99, and it was clearly snack-sized. I loved the concept and was once again impressed by the chili sauce. If this was more fully loaded and spiked with jalapeños and other toppings, I’d go a bit higher on the score. Solid concept. 7/10
Chili Cheeseburger – My biggest criticism here might be the marketing. The website and menu claim that this is a smashburger, but it’s obviously not. They use a frozen preformed beef patty and either forgot to season it, or assume that the chilis sauce will season it enough. It almost did. The chili sauce does so much heavy lifting on this burger, but not enough to make it a good purchase. My bites that had a lot of chili were good, but my bites with less chili were bland. I believe that you can make a great chili cheeseburger with this chili sauce. This was not that burger. 5/10
Conclusion
Wienerschnitzel was honestly pretty great. Cheap, and if I timed my trip with one of their coupon days (4 chili cheese dogs for $4) then it would have been even cheaper. I can definitely see myself coming back one of these days and experimenting with the menu a little bit more. Make sure you watch my video review on YouTube or check out my Fast Food French Fry Rankings.
Sodafry 