Barkers hot dogs a hot item again

Time was, Atlantans hungry for a bite of the best dog in town lined up on the broiling pavement of Woodruff Park, waiting as long as 20 minutes for a charcoal-grilled bite of red-hot heaven.

Flash forward 15 years. The Barkers Red Hots cart has long since vanished from downtown, along with the hundreds of lawyers and bankers who used to patronize it. Locations in Midtown, Underground Atlanta and the Georgia Dome are gone, too.

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ANDY SHARP / asharp@ajc.com

The charcoal-grilled flavor keeps many hot dog connoisseurs coming back to Barkers Red Hots.

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ANDY SHARP / asharp@ajc.com

Barkers Red Hots owner Glenn Robins cooks up a batch of charcoal-grilled hot dogs for lunch customers.

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Barkers Red Hots
3000 Windy Hill Road S.E., Marietta, in the Terraces at Windy Hill shopping center
770-272-0407
barkersredhots.com

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Yet you can’t keep a good dog on ice forever.

As summer sizzles to a finish, a line of men wait patiently in a strip shopping center near Cumberland, watching a master at work. Glenn Robins places hot dogs and sausages on a grill, turns them with the ease of someone who’s been cooking them for four decades, and pierces them with a long fork to let the heat penetrate.

The charcoal glows as hotly as ever, but this time, a heavy-duty air conditioner makes it close to bearable. The casings puff and blister, and the smell of backyard summers fills the air.

Pass the hot sauce and horseradish mustard: Barkers Red Hots are back.

Robins and his wife, Vivian, sold the vending carts in 1995 and, except for operating a stand in the Georgia Dome, thought they’d left the hot dog business behind. They started printing large-format graphics. As competition heated up, they shifted gears again.

They partnered with a former customer, attorney Joe Gudelsky, and opened a location surrounded by office parks, on Windy Hill Road near I-75.

“We’ve been out of it for 12 years and people still walk in the door like it was yesterday,” Robins says. “They still remember that hot dog they had in Woodruff Park or the Arts Center so long ago.”

Business has been up and down since Barkers opened a year ago. A hot dog used to be one of the least expensive lunches around. Now a dog costs $2.69 or more, no match for the dollar menus at fast-food restaurants nearby, and the average ticket adds up to nearly $9.

Hot dog purists still keep coming. Dan Webster, who works nearby, is making his second visit. The charcoal grilling drew him back, as it does other regulars. Most restaurants serve boiled or steamed dogs.

“I don’t just like any hot dog,” Webster says. “It’s got to be a specialty hot dog.”

Barkers gets its dogs from Sahlen’s in Buffalo, N.Y., the company’s original supplier. Robins, a native of Buffalo, grew up with Sahlen’s products and thinks the pork and beef dog is the best thing on his menu. Besides that dog, dubbed the Original, Barkers sells all-beef dogs and, in a concession to changing tastes, a veggie dog and a chicken sausage served with feta cheese and spinach. In the next month, Barkers will diversify the menu even more, adding grilled grouper and other sandwiches.

Dog lovers may dispute it, but Robins concedes that most people can’t eat hot dogs three or four times a week.

Robins is 52 now, his wife is 48. The business first opened in 1984. Things have changed, yet in the most important ways, they haven’t.

On a slow day, it may take as little as two minutes for a customer to get a dog. But when the sun is shining and the mood strikes, the line can stretch out the door, with a 20-minute wait just like the old days.

Hot dog.