Robalini's Note: The Konformist presents a special collection of articles on the most underrated Los Angeles contribution to cuisine, the Oki Dog. From 1995 to 1997 I worked across the street from the Fairfax shack, and learned to love their deliciously disgusting hybrid of food fusion... http://www.laweekly.com/index.php?option=com_lsd&task=default&vid=19013&tab=eat&Itemid=571 Oki Dog Immortalized by the Descendents, beloved by the Germs, the original Oki Dog, long since closed, was to the original ‘70s punk-rock scene in Los Angeles what the Brown Derby was to 1940s filmdom. The most famous creation here at the stand that remains is the eponymous dog, a couple of frankfurters wrapped in a tortilla with chili, pickles, mustard, a slice of fried pastrami and a torrent of goopy American cheese — a cross-cultural burrito that’s pretty hard to stomach unless you’ve got the tum of a 16-year-old, but strangely delicious nonetheless. Open daily 10 a.m.-10 p.m. No alcohol. Lot parking. Cash only. Entrées $4-$5.50. American Cross-Culture. (Jonathan Gold) *** http://www.losanjealous.com/2005/07/05/in-profile-oki-dog/ In Profile: Oki-Dog Written by Ryan on Tuesday July 05th 2005 Oki-Dog, now we sing thee merits. Day-glo orange shack! Shack with proud “C” rating on Fairfax! Former shack of the punkrockers in the 70s on Santa Monica Blvd! Oki-Dog: Where menu letters are exchanged so you can buy either Hot Coffee or Hot Cock for .98 cents - your choice! Oki-Dog: How is it made? Oki-Dog: Do we care!? Ode to the Oki, Bukowski style…… i ate an ‘oki-dog’ yesterday… tortilla that has been magically folded to have two compartments each with a dog in it one side filled then with chili and cheese the other filled to the juicing brim with pastrami the resulting giant burrito is nearly unmanageable i think it is trying to resolve itself inside me now *** http://www.hotdogspot.com/2004/07/oki-dog-weirdest-dogs-in-town.html Saturday, July 24, 2004 Oki Dog: The Weirdest Dogs In Town! OKI DOG 860 N Fairfax Av, Hollywood 323.655.4166 PARTICULARS: Standard Dog, Polish Sausage, The specialty of the house... Oki Dog Burrito, Chili, Pastrami, Fries, Grunge Health Department Rating: A DISTINCTIONS: Open late, Bizarre clientele, Hands down, the weirdest hot dog in LA Occasionally, you run across a concept that is so alien... so removed from anything you've ever experienced before... that you just don't know what to think about it. Oki Dog is that sort of place. Using the standards we normally apply to rate hot dog stands, Oki wouldn't even register a single dewclaw of a dog on our Dog Rating scale. The dogmeat is chewy and bland, the chili is very cheap, and the atmosphere is akin to eating in a grimy gas station restroom in the middle of the Mohave Desert. This place is a "dive among dives"... But we have to admit, we kinda like the place. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We'll do our best to describe our experience... It was a hot Sunday late afternoon. Jon the Food Slob stopped by Steve Doggie-Dogg's office and invited him out for a dog excursion. After consulting the internet, the yellow pages and the telephone, we determined that the only place open that we hadn't tried yet was Oki Dog in Hollywood. We had driven by the ramshackle orange hut on the way to Pinks a few weeks ago. It looked pretty dismal, surrounded by a bunch of overgrown potted plants and some battered lawn furniture. Loitering about were the requisite local "characters" who looked like they were right out of a David Lynch movie. We decided we'd better give it a try in the name of science... some other time. Well, this was the time. Oki Dog used to be on Santa Monica Bl at Vista... right in the middle of "Boystown", where shirtless young gentlemen can be found on every corner "looking for rides". Since it was close to the Hollywood nightclubs and always open late, it developed quite a following among the punk rock movement. Skinheads, longhairs and mohawks could be seen sitting side by side on the stools chowing down on greasy burritos at all hours of the day and night. It was a real happening place back in the late 70s. We don't really know why, but it never occurred to us to stop in and try the place back then. Well, the neighbors complained about the unruly mob that hung out there, so the City Council banished Oki Dog to a small hut off the strip on Fairfax. A more respectable chain restaurant with pre-fab food and lots of security guards took Oki's spot on Santa Monica and Vista. If Oki Dog could be said to be on the skids before, this development put it face down in the gutter. Today, many ex-Punks who went on to become accountants and lawyers have fond memories of late nights at Oki Dog. As they drive by their old hangout in their shiny new Beemers or Audi station wagons, they roll their windows up tight, lock the doors and shed a quiet tear for what used to be... But the amazing thing is, Oki Dog isn't just a memory. It still exists. The hut is just the same, albeit a bit more battered around the edges.The food hasn't changed... It was always battered around the edges. The battered people who eat there haven't changed much either. Oki Dog LIVES! Well, we pulled up to the hut in Jon's Beemer, rolled the windows up, locked the doors and steeled ourselves for a visceral experience like we've never encountered before. "I don't know about this place..." Steve said, looking up at the sign which read "O I DOG". Maybe they aren't even in business any more." "The door's open and the lights are on." Jon said cheerfully, "Let's go do Oki!" We trudged into the hut and were greeted by a sight right out of a documentary on life in third world countries. Homemade plywood benches and tables painted in gaudy colors were littered around the joint. A battered old TV with the jittery picture of a soccer game babbled "Goal! Goal! Goal!" up in the corner. Weird decorations from holidays long past lingered in the eaves over our heads. A drunk hunched over the remains of an Oki Dog in the corner. Video games displayed scenes of urban horror, complete with wild car chases and shootouts between simulated policemen and virtual gang members. And in a tiny pickup window behind an iron fence stood Felix the Chef, waiting for us to place our order. We looked at each other and shrugged. "What do we want?" Steve asked. "An Oki Dog, I guess..." Jon pushed his face up to the steel bars and asked Felix, "What the heck is an Oki Dog, anyway?" Chef Felix explained that it was two hot dogs in a burrito filled with chili and pastrami. "Pastrami?" "Yes, grilled pastrami." A look of fear flashed across Jon the Food Slob's face. He was having a Huell Howser flashback! "You can do it, big fella." Steve said supportingly. "I'll have one too." Just in case, Steve ordered a Polish Dog and a Standard Dog with Mustard, Onions and Cheese. Jon ordered a backup Standard Dog as well. We sat down with a couple of Diet Cokes to admire the atmosphere until our meal arrived. Before we knew it, Felix handed us two oversized Frisbees filled with food... The Oki Dogs were so hot, they glowed, so we set them aside and focused on the Standard Dogs first. As Jon took his first bite, Chef Felix came out from his barbed wire enclave, stood on a table, and started banging on the side of the old TV to get the picture to come in clearer. No amount of fiddling with the coat hanger antenna would get a clearer view of the soccer game, so he sat down and watched it in all of its jittery glory. "What do you think of the dog, Jon?" Steve asked, afraid to commit to biting into his own until it was determined to be safe. "Mmmfff... Mmmmfff... CHEWY!" was the only response. So, Steve took the plunge. The dogmeat had no snap and was strangely leathery inside. It was much more tough than any other dog we've ever tasted. It wasn't particularly good, and even though the onions were freshly chopped and the bun nicely steamed, the dog was a bust. The Polish Dog was even worse, with unidentifiable bits of various animals strewn into a terrazzo-like matrix. The Standard dogs were just about as bad as the slop we were served at Pinks, so we looked at the heaping mounds they call Oki Dogs with some degree of trepidation. "Who's gonna go first?" Jon said. Steve bravely picked up his overfilled tortilla sack and closed his eyes and bit in... There was a silent pause. Steve chewed a bit. He swallowed and took another bite... and another... "Hey, this isn't half bad! Wait a minute... It's great!" The tortilla had been rolled like a figure eight, with chili on one side and grilled Pastrami and two Hot Dogs on the other. By biting into one side or the other, you could control whether you got a mouthful of chili or a gobfull of meat. The Chili was cheap, with plenty of flour added as a thickener, but it tasted meaty and was nicely spiced. We aren't particularly fond of the typical California Dog Stand Chili we've encountered at most places, but Oki's Chili was definitely the best we've had in that style. The Pastrami was stringy and lean, grilled until it had a little crunch... almost like bacon. In the context of the burrito, the chewy Hot Dogs actually worked. The unlikely combination of flavors and textures was heavenly. Steve wolfed his Oki Dog down greedily and went back for a second. He asked Felix to add some raw chopped Onions and Tomatoes to the Chili side. Felix handled the request perfectly, and the second Oki Dog was even better than the first. At $2.50, the Oki Dog is the champion stomach filling bargain of all time, beating out Tommy's chili drenched cheeseburgers for sheer bulk on a budget. We sat back and enjoyed the Oki Dog afterglow. Steve got a kick out of reading the way customers had altered the plastic letters making up the menu. Beverages listed included FRUIT PUNCHOODLEMAINE and OT OCOA. The "Students & Seniors Special" was unprintably obscene. (But if you squint at the picture of Steve, you can just barely read it...) Jon had an amazed expression on his face as he gazed lovingly at the meager surroundings. "You might think I'm plain daffy, but I think I might just like to come back to this place. It's growing on me." "I know what you mean." Steve agreed. There was something about this place that reeked of Los Angeles. The food was a halfbreed blend of Mexican and All-American, just like the city itself. It filled you up for just a few pesos. The place was ugly and brown, but it was home. There was a definite aesthetic here, and it worked. The tough part was trying to assign a Dog Rating to this unique experience. As we've done in the past, we worked our way up the list... "Is it better than Pinks at One and a Half Dogs?" "Heck yeah!" How about Costco at Two?" "You betcha." "The Schnitz and Taste Chicago are next up the list at Two and a Half." "That's close, but I think I'd rather eat at Oki Dog than either of those places." "What about Rubin's Red Hot at Three Dogs?" "Nope... That's too far. Rubins beats Oki." So, we decided to award Oki Dog a respectable Two and a Half Dog rating! Who'd-a thunk it?! *** Robalini's Note: Though not as great as with pastrami, this Hawaiian version still is a pretty tasty treat... http://starbulletin.com/2004/09/01/features/story1.html Wednesday, September 1, 2004 DEAN SENSUI / DSENSUI@STARBULLETIN.COM The Oki Dog is celebrating its 15th anniversary as a vital culinary component of the Okinawan Festival. The Oki Dog: Fusion cuisine to da max By Betty Shimabukuro betty@starbulletin.com The Oki Dog is apropos of nothing. A non sequitur. The sum of incongruent parts that add up to Okinawan audacity. An Oki Dog begins with a hot dog (any type, but red is aesthetically best), a dollop of chili (must be from Zippy's, founded by the Okinawan Higa family), a few slices of shoyu pork (this is what truly makes it Okinawan), shredded lettuce (iceberg, for crunch), wrapped in a flour tortilla (for ease of transport). And as if all that's not enough: "It would taste good with mayonnaise, but that spoils too quickly," says Isaac Hokama, one of those responsible for bringing the Oki Dog to Hawaii. Consider it an example of four-part fusion: American/Mexican/Tex-Mexican/Okinawan. Or consider it inexplicable. Whatever the case, the Oki Dog is back this weekend, for its 15th-annual appearance at the Okinawan Festival. It's a popular little doggie: Last year's festival grossed $13,500 in Oki Dog sales, which translates to roughly 3,375 sold at $4 each. The Oki Dog actually has a noble punk-rock history that is totally non-Hawaiian. It was invented by an Okinawan native, Sakai "Jimmy" Sueyoshi, who imported himself to the United States and even did time in the Vietnam War. Sometime in the 70s, Sueyoshi opened an Oki Dog stand on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. His signature product was a burrito filled with a hot dog, chili and shredded pastrami. It made him rich. "Since it was close to the Hollywood nightclubs and always open late, it developed quite a following among the punk-rock movement," writes a reviewer for www.hotdogspot.com, an online resource on hot dogs in Los Angeles. "Skinheads, longhairs and mohawks could be seen sitting side by side on the stools chowing down on greasy burritos at all hours of the day and night." Eventually, complaints from neighbors about the unruly crowd forced Oki Dog out of its prime location and into new digs on Fairfax Avenue in North Hollywood. Sueyoshi himself is somewhat elusive and did not return phone calls to the new Oki Dog location, but enough hearsay testimony exists to tell his story. Hokama, one of the organizers of Honolulu's Okinawan Festival, met Sueyoshi at the original, rather run-down Oki Dog in 1989. "This guy was quite a character," Hokama recalls. "His customers were all guys with pink hair, blue hair ... He came out from the kitchen in a T-shirt, a real greasy-looking guy." The first thing he said: "Let's get away from these (insert extremely derogatory phrase here). Really loud. That's how he treated his customers." But Sueyoshi proved a good host, feeding the group well and telling them of his beginnings serving Oki Dogs, burgers and french fries made from fresh potatoes. "At that time he was open 24 hours. He used to sleep behind the restaurant." Part of Hokama's group that day was Howard Higa, another Okinawan Fest stalwart who had some culinary training from Kapiolani Community College. Higa suggested making a Hawaii version of the Oki Dog for sale at the festival. Sueyoshi gave them verbal permission to use the name. Higa recalls trying various tortilla-wrapped combinations, including chop steak and beef tomato. "You can wrap anything in there -- even spaghetti and meatballs." Imagine that. But without a dog, how could it be an Oki Dog? So Higa settled on chili and Okinawan shoyu pork, a dish already being cooked for the festival. "I thought we could use the kuzu," Higa says. Translation: the bits and pieces too small for the shoyu pork plates. "Instead of wasting it, we could use it in another product." He added shredded cabbage -- "I thought Okinawans eat a lot of cabbage and we already had that at the festival, too." Hokama suggested lettuce instead, because it was lighter and the dog was getting a bit hefty. Higa tried his creation out on some teens in his extended family -- "that's the target market" -- and the response was good. His Oki Dog debuted at that year's festival. Meanwhile, back in L.A., Troy Bigger answers the phone at the existing Oki Dog. Sueyoshi still owns the name, Bigger says, but is leasing the space to Bigger's bosses. Today's Oki Dog is made with two all-beef hot dogs, all-beef pastrami and a slice of American cheese. ("The unlikely combination of flavors and textures was heavenly," writes hotdogspot.com.) Bigger finds the idea of adding pork to the mix somewhat distasteful, but then, he's not Okinawan. "Pure white boy" is his self-description -- but he's been serving up Oki Dogs for 18 years. He describes Oki Dog's customer base as ages 13 to 80, dining at lunch, dinner or as late as 4 a.m. Some come from counties outside Los Angeles with coolers to carry home stashes of Oki Dogs. Bigger still eats them himself, although without the tortilla, in what he calls a "mini-Atkins" version. "At least you gotta try it one time," he says by way of recommendation. "It won't kill you. It might clean out your system, but it won't kill you." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Oki Dog is located at 860 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles. Call (323) 655-4166. Do-it-yourself Oki Dog -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To make your own Oki Dog, you'll need a hot dog, flour tortilla, shredded lettuce and Zippy's chili. All of this comes store-bought, but you might want to make your own shoyu pork, the essential ingredient. Shoyu pork is cooked for the Okinawan Festival by various Oahu restaurants. This recipe comes from Hanagasa Inn. Once you have your ingredients lined up, follow the wrapping instructions. Shoyu Pork 3 pounds pork butt >> Sauce: 1/2 cup awamori 1 cup sugar 1 cup shoyu (Kikkoman or Yamasa brands preferred) 1 clove garlic Small piece ginger Pre-boil pork butt in water 45 minutes. Drain and slice. Return meat to pot. Combine sauce ingredients and pour over meat. Add water if necessary so meat is covered with liquid. Simmer 1 hour on low heat, until meat is very tender. Serves 12. Approximate nutritional analysis, per serving: 240 calories, 6 g total fat, 2 g saturated fat, 60 mg cholesterol, greater than 1,200 mg sodium, 17 g carbohydrate, 24 g protein. Nutritional analyses by Joannie Dobbs, Ph.D., C.N.S. Deconstructing an oki dog DEAN SENSUI / DSENSUI@STARBULLETIN.COM Step 1: Place some chili and a hot dog on a flour tortilla. Step 2: Fold a flap over the hot dog and add lettuce. Step 3: Top with sliced or shredded shoyu pork. Step 4: Fold in the sides to make a neat package. Step 5: Roll up firmly and serve.