The Origins Of The Forgotten Seafood Hot Dogs

Hot dogs are the quintessential summertime grill-out food. With so many different US hot dog styles, such as the Chicago-style with a pickle slice, sport peppers, and tomato slices, or the West Virginia-style hot dog with chili and coleslaw, you could have a barbecue every weekend and not serve the same kind of hot dog twice. While typical hot dogs are actually made of finely-ground skeletal meat (in particular, the trimmings that are leftover after larger cuts like steaks and roasts have been removed), these franks aren't always made from beef or pork — they can also be made from seafood. 

There are many different ways to cook fish, but grinding and encasing it into a sausage form probably isn't the first way that comes to mind. However, when William Lane was attending a Friday-night, Catholic-school football game in 1941, he met a vendor who was having trouble selling hot dogs due to the "no meat on Fridays" rule during Lent. This sparked an idea to make a fish hot dog, so Lane teamed up with a sausage maker to experiment with tuna, attempting to make it less fishy and less stinky. By 1957, the duo had begun manufacturing "Tunies," or tuna hot dogs in San Diego, until 1967 when production stopped due to lack of demand. On the other side of the country, the New England companyDavid Bros. Fisheries had actually beaten them to the punch and began producing their own tuna dogs called "Friday Franks" in 1949, although this product also never gained widespread popularity.

Since Tunies and Friday Franks, there have been multiple fish hot dog products and menu items over the years. In the 1980s, two companies called Bounty of the Sea and Ham of the Sea introduced their own tuna hot dogs to the market, but just like their predecessors, the products weren't popular for very long, with some past customers remembering that they had an unpleasant taste. In 2022, Norwegian company Kvarøy Arctic created salmon hot dogs that are available in three flavors: original, original and cheese, and jalapeño and cheese. They can be found in the seafood section of Whole Foods or ordered online. The same year, Blue Circle Foods introduced salmon sausages in four flavors: original, apple thyme, Italian, and lemon dill, which are available online and at select retailers.

Dear Annie, a pescatarian wine bar in Cambridge, Mass., offers the more-complex "Sea Dog," made with a ground mixture of haddock, scallops, and shrimp, then topped with dill pickles and served in a brioche bun. Aphotic, a San Francisco seafood spot, once had an upgraded version with their bluefin tuna dog topped with caviar and gold leaf. So, there are at least a few places and companies still offering this niche product. Maybe it's finally time to make seafood hot dogs a popular trend — at your next backyard barbecue, take a page out of these restaurants' books and surprise your guests with a unique spin on the summer classic.