Beach Story / Signature Food
The Water Taxi Beach Black Angus Hot Dog
One of the Beach's defining food stories was not just that hot dogs were on the menu. The archive now ties the LIC dog to a custom-made Stahl-Meyer relationship, strong annual quantities, and a larger Harry Hawk hot-dog lineage.
The taste people remember.
Black Angus hot dogs were part of the Water Taxi Beach menu from the first summer. WTB's own 2006 menu named Stahl-Meyer and called the Black Angus Beef Dog deep fried. By 2009, the official LIC menu described it as a custom-made Stahl-Meyer 100 percent Black Angus beef hot dog.
WTB also described the dog as all beef, with a classic New York flavor and a garlic note.
The dog moved easily from an everyday Beach order to July 4 parties, Food Film Festival programming, private picnics, and Schnack and BroomeDoggs-style hot-dog bars. It became one of the tastes that people carried away from the Beach.
By the numbers.
The strongest quantity sources say the Beach served more than 7,345 pounds of Stahl-Meyer Angus beef hot dogs in 2007 and sold 25,000 hot dogs in 2008. One April 2008 supplier thread documents 32 cases of Black Angus.
An eight-to-a-pound serving size would put those two years at roughly 83,760 dogs. The archive is still filling in the exact pack details and the totals from the other seasons.
A quarter-million, in Harry's memory.
Harry remembers roughly 250,000 hot dogs served over the life of the original LIC beach. The surviving menus, annual numbers, and supplier trail show how quickly the total grew, while the archive continues filling in the remaining seasons.
Details such as the casing, formulation, packaging, distributor, and complete lifetime count are still being researched.
