If taking part in the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest is an extreme sport, preparing all those dogs in the Nathan’s Famous kitchen is a carefully-choreographed dance.
At least that’s how George Shea sees it.
Shea, the co-founder of Major League Eating and one of the minds behind the competition, took Brooklyn Paper on a tour of the original Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs location at the corner of Surf and Stillwell avenues less than a week before thousands of people would descend on the intersection for the July 4 event.
As many as 3,000 franks will be prepped on the flat-top grills in the Nathan’s kitchen on the morning of the Hot Dog Eating Contest, Shea said, as well as two massive additional grills they bring in specially for the competition.
“The servers use tongs to go in, and they flip. Go in, and they flip,” Shea explained, describing the motions of the cooks. “It’s almost an art, it’s almost a dance. You see the motion of a plié, almost an arabesque. It’s almost like a professional dance troupe.”
When are the dogs done, perfect and ready to serve?
“You really have to be a grillmaster at Nathan’s to know that,” Shea said.
Hot dog history
The Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest started way back in 1972, when public relations experts Morty Matz and Max Rosey joined the team. Shea joined the team in 1988, and took over the contest after Rosey’s death in 1991.
Back then, the contest was “pretty small,” Shea said, just a couple of contestants, a couple of cameras.
“What I saw in the contest was the opportunity for a lot of enjoyment, humor, and drama, real drama,” Shea said. “There’s nothing quite like this because it marries humor and the excitement of an actual athletic event.”
The contest really took off in 2001, when Takeru Kobayashi joined and wolfed down 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes. Before then, contestants were eating closer to 12 or 15 dogs. Then came Joey Chestnut in 2007, who sucked down…
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