Photo taken by Andrew Fabian

It’s not that the name of the new hotdog establishment on Main Street is particularly innovative—surely every middle schooler or college-aged stoner for a thousand miles could have arrived at it quite easily. What’s impressive is that this restaurant had the audacity to put it on a giant sign on a busy street. “Doggystyle,” it reads in blue and red comic book script. 

Sandwiched between a real estate office and a bar, Doggystyle offers hot dogs both inventive and traditional, with a long list of regional styles from around the US to go along with a build-your-own option including any number of freshly prepared toppings and sauces. All of their hotdogs use Hummel Brothers’ product, a third-generation Connecticut-based meat company founded by German immigrants in the 1930s. The result is a textbook foundation for the franchise-looking restaurant to riff on. The Californian hotdog—depicted on a wall by a blonde cartoon hotdog on a surfboard—comes with bacon, lettuce, red onion, tomato and caraway mayo. The latter makes the hotdog fun and interesting with the caraway’s herbal, almost cooling effect on the flavor profile.

By the time you dig into a small side of perfectly crispy crinkle cut fries, the obvious joke in the name of the place is nearly forgotten. Nearly.

Photo taken by Andrew Fabian

Doggystyle, 1544 Main St., Sarasota, 941-260-5835.