Hot Dog Tour – The Windmill, Red Bank

by Alice Magdziak • December 6, 2010 • Food, Hot Dog Tour, Monmouth • Comments (0) • 1621

Every year, we take a tour of area hot dog places for Ed’s birthday. Since we live here, most of our tour has been in New Jersey. We’ve also checked out some places in NY and CT but our hearts and dogs belong in New Jersey. Now, we’re ready to start letting you in on our findings. The posts will come out over the next several months and, of course, there will always be places that we’re still discovering. So here goes!

Today, we found ourselves in Red Bank which is home to one of the Windmill Restaurants. Most of them are near the Jersey Shore except for one in Westfield. The original restaurant is a windmill-shaped one in Long Branch that opened in 1964.

In Red Bank, we had chili dogs with mustard and an order of fries.

The giant hot dog had a pretty thick skin (which I like) and was grilled on a flat-top grill.

The bun was pretty average and was sizably shorter than the dog (a minus for me).

The chili was very interesting. There was a noticable fresh tomato taste. There were visible chunks of meat and peppers which made it different from most other homogenous-looking chili from other hot dog joints.

Even the mustard was slightly different than most places. It seemed spicier and was easily able to distinguish itself from the bold flavor of the chili.

The fries were cooked to order so they took longer to serve than the dogs. This meant that they were extremely hot and extremely fresh. Delicious!

I thought the prices were a little high. Despite getting a large hot dog, I thought nearly $5 was steep.

All in all, this was a very good hot dog restaurant chain that I’d visit again if I was in the area of one but not that I’d search out because of something special.

Check out everything else we’ve written about New Jersey Food by clicking here.