I guess if we have deep fried Twinkies & Snickers bars...
Japan's latest cool cuisine?
Ice cream hot dogs!
By Ryann Connell
Staff Writer
December 14, 2004
Joining Japan's long list of dubious taste bud ticklers such as raw horseflesh ice cream, mayonnaise pizza toppings and fecund beans are ice-cream hot dogs, the hottest and coolest culinary delight from Osaka that's now melting in mouths from people all over the country, according to Shukan Taishu.
Ice dogs -- a chunk of vanilla ice cream slapped into a sizzling hot dog roll -- are the brainchild of Rokko Bokujo Arai, a small store located in the Amerika-mura section of Osaka's Minami entertainment district.
Since the store opened in September last year, growing numbers of particularly young gourmands of grossness seem keen on giving their eye teeth for ice dogs.
"We used to be a barbershop," ice dog originator Eiko Arai tells Shukan Taishu. "We've been in business in the same place the whole time since 1968. About 20 years ago, though (Minami) became a young people's place and our barbershop became something of a fish out of water."
Acting on a realization that there was a need to change would eventually give birth to the ice dog.
"We knew we needed to come up with a different line of business," Arai says. "We ran a normal hot dog joint for about a year, before deciding to start using ice cream instead of franks and the ice dog idea was born."
Arai's steaming fried rolls packed with chilled ice cream lightly fried so it develops a skin is still a hot choice even during Osaka's icy winters.
"They're 300 yen each. We sell over 100 ice dogs a day. We fry the surface, so they don't melt too easily," Arai says. "But there are lots of young buyers, so you get couples asking us to split an ice dog between them, or even some who ask that they be cut into threes."
Sisters Yori and Yoshie Harada barked with delight at tucking into their ice dogs.
"Both the outside and the inside have their own sublime tastes," the Yoshie tells Shukan Taishu. "My sister came all the way from Aichi Prefecture just to eat this."