After three more historical disputes, I decided that today it might be better to cover another contemporary trivial dispute, one that should be familiar to many of you reading: Is a hot dog a sandwich?
I don’t really think of a hot dog as a sandwich, as when I think of a sandwich I think of something between two slices of bread, probably because that’s what I’d get in my lunch box when I was younger. A longer sandwich like a sub/hoagie/whatever (I don’t really want to make that dialectical difference the subject of an article, but my mind could change) However, personal conceptions aren’t really a good benchmark for how to determine what is a sandwich, as I would never think of a hamburger as a sandwich even though it falls quite clearly into the sandwich camp.
The issue has become a sort of Internet meme, which first seems to have surged in 2015. That year, the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (yes, such an organization exists and is 100% serious) weighed in to declare that hot dogs should not be considered sandwiches. Perhaps because it does not overtly identify as an internet meme, the debate has persisted even after other contemporary memes have worn out their welcome. Many sources have weighed in with their thoughts on the matter in the ensuing years.
Amusingly, there has been a court case predicated around the definition of a sandwich, White City Shopping Center vs. PR Restaurants, LLC, which was decided in 2006. PR Restaurants, a New England Panera Bread franchisee, had, as part of their agreement to lease space in White City Shopping Center in Worcester, Massachusetts, become the exclusive provider of sandwiches within the shopping center. When PR found out that another company was to open Qdoba restaurant within the same shopping center, they cried foul, arguing because Qdoba sold tacos, burritos, and quesadillas they should be considered an additional sandwich provider. White City Shopping Center decided to resolve the dispute in court, and the Worcester County Superior Court granted their request to dismiss PR’s objection, stating that tacos, burritos, and quesadillas were not obviously included as sandwiches and thus the contract was not violated. However, this legal definition says nothing about hot dogs.
The original sandwich, at least the ones consumed by John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich in the 18th century, were meats between pieces of bread, although the dish had probably existed for many centuries by his lifetime. Other kinds of sandwich involving longer bread rolls came into existence in the 19th and early 20th centuries. By the general definition, a hot dog should probably be considered a sandwich, as it does consist of food between a bun. Sausage sandwiches do exist, after all. The main hangup, then, for those who are unconvinced that hot dogs are sandwiches, seems to be that the bun is supposed to serve as one solid piece, rather than the two separate pieces that constitute a sandwich. Ultimately, though, what matters most in the public perception is the wording of the issue, which is why the question is ambiguous to begin with.
(Also, the term refers to the sausage with or without the bun, perhaps adding further confusion.)