Ah, the age-old question: Is a hot dog a sandwich? And what is a sandwich?
In most modern meanings, a sandwich is any number of ingredients stuck between some bread. Spread some peanut butter and jelly between two slices of Wonder Bread, and you’ve automatically made both ingredients easier to eat, more portable and, arguably, much tastier.
By that definition, hamburgers, wraps, tacos and, yes, even hot dogs, would fall under the category of sandwich. So why do so many refuse to call them so? What are the rules of a “sandwich,” and is there some kind of playbook out there that we don’t know about?
The question has been hotly debated by the world’s greatest minds since the dawn of time (or at least, the dawn of hot dogs). The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council has even weighed in, saying that a hot dog is not a sandwich.
At first glance, it may seem like a simple and ridiculous topic, but the question is truly a philosophical debate worthy of pondering. As you go deeper, you might even start to delve into the very nature of the universe itself.
Many people would say it’s the bread that makes a sandwich. A common argument against the hot dog is the fact that it’s nestled in a bun. Nobody would contest that a PB&J is a sandwich, but what if you put those same ingredients together in a hot dog bun? Is that still a sandwich? Conversely, what if you slice hot dogs lengthwise and place it between bread, is it still a hot dog?
Some say the distinction is in the geometry of how the bread is cut, with a hot dog bun’s top slice being the defining factor. But turn it 90 degrees, and suddenly the cut is on the side, just like something you would order from Subway, and no one would say that isn’t a sandwich. Plus, I don’t know about everyone else, but when I eat a hot dog, I turn my head to the side anyways, which is basically the same thing as turning the hot dog.
Is it the actual wiener itself that disqualifies a hot dog from being a sandwich? If that were true, anything with bologna wouldn’t be considered a sandwich either — in my eyes, bologna is basically a thick hot dog cut into slices.
For me, none of these arguments about the physicality of a hot dog are compelling enough to dissuade me from thinking that a hot dog is, in fact, a sandwich. Same goes for other sandwiched items — some don’t consider a hamburger a sandwich (including some unnamed heretics on the Avenue team) even though it has all the characteristics of a sandwich.
And yet, open-faced sandwiches, despite not being “sandwiched,” are only sandwiches because we as a society have decided to call them that.
So maybe the answer is more ethereal.
Is a tomato a vegetable? Is cereal soup? All of these questions dig into the nature of language and what things are, and can’t be easily answered.
In ontology (a branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being), the nihilists would argue that a hot dog is not even a hot dog, just a bunch of atoms arranged in a hot dog shape. Deflationists would argue that the entire argument is silly, and that lump of hot dog-shaped atoms is a hot dog, because that’s just what a hot dog is.
Ultimately, it all comes down to vibes. If you want to think a hot dog isn’t a sandwich, that’s fine. Personally, I’m of the mind that a hot dog is, and will always be, a sandwich — technically.