Hot Dogs

Mayor Rendell helps give out hot dogs to children outside the Greater Philadelphia Food Bank on behalf of Hatfield Quality Meats on its "Hot Dog Day. " The company yesterday donated 50,000 hot dogs to the food bank in the 300 block of West Berks Street.

To qualify as a greasy spoon, Brunish's would have to upgrade. The Pottstown sandwich shop is an institution in this weathered Schuylkill mill town, where fortunes were once tied to the iron and steel industries. The mill furnaces stopped firing up a long time ago, but Brunish's is still cooking away, a cement bunker of an eatery just more than six feet high that extends improbably from the basement of Dan Brunish's home to the sidewalk. At lunchtime, customers line up out the door for the hot sausage and hot dogs, the most popular items - and for many years the only ones.

FOR A TOWN WITH A dairy-slathered steak sandwich as its main food icon, a town whose name signifies "cream cheese" to many Americans, Philadelphia certainly has more than its share of vegan surprises. Now, I'm not talking about the "surprise" that all-veggie foods can be decadently delicious, but rather those dishes that show up where you wouldn't necessarily expect them. Case in point: While walking down South Street recently, I saw a sidewalk sign advertising a new joint devoted to creatively topped hot dogs.

Murray Handwerker, 89, who helped grow Nathan's Famous from his father's Coney Island hot dog stand into a national franchise, died Saturday at his home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. His son, Bill, said his father had suffered from dementia. Mr. Handwerker's father, Nathan, opened the Coney Island stand in 1916, four years after emigrating from Poland. Murray was born five years later and spent so much time in the restaurant he said he came to regard the frankfurter bun boxes as his playpen.

The elusive wolf-dog of Pennypack Park has been caught, the Pennsylvania Game Commission has confirmed. The early-morning capture was made with the help of hot dogs and foothold traps. No thanks to foxes, which kept eating the bait. The animal is believed to be a wolf-Alaskan malamute mix that was purchased as a pet in Florida and escaped when its owners were visiting Philadelphia in March. It seemed docile enough, sometimes just lying in a clearing off the 8600 block of Algon Avenue, at the edge of the Northeast Philadelphia park.

CHICAGO - The nation's two largest hot-dog makers took their legal beefs yesterday to federal court, where a judge will determine whether Oscar Mayer or Ball Park franks broke false-advertising laws in their efforts to become top dog. As the bench trial got under way, U.S. District Judge Morton Denlow cast his eyes across the Chicago courtroom, where half a dozen attorneys were at opposing tables, and said, "Let the wiener wars begin. " The battle pits Chicago-area companies Sara Lee Corp., which makes Ball Park franks, against Kraft Foods Inc., which makes Oscar Mayer, in a case that could clarify how far companies can go when boasting that their product is better than a competitor's.

By William Saletan   Politicians are hypocrites. We know this from sex scandals: The lawmakers who preach loudest about chastity are often the ones who later get caught using hookers or cheating on their wives.   In recent years, the chastity movement has turned from sex to junk food. But the hypocrisy hasn't changed. Take the hero of the food temperance movement, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He has banned trans fats, pressured companies to reduce salt, and mandated public calorie counts at restaurants.

What is it? The owners of Calypso (formerly of the Chestnut Hill Farmers Market) went mobile last year with Mini Trini, featuring a simple menu of delicacies from the Caribbean island of Trinidad. Real street: Owner Iman Marcano said their most popular item is the traditional street food called double. "The same way you buy hot dogs on the street, [double is] what people are selling on the corners in Trinidad," Marcano said. A double is fried dough (bara) filled with curried chickpeas (chana)