How the Oregonian Pronto Pup Turned a Midwestern Legend

Alongside the facet of Freeway 101 on the Oregon Coast, an enormous 30-foot fiberglass corn canine, full with a zigzag of yellow mustard, looms over the roof of a small white-and-black scorching canine shack. On a Saturday in Might, the Rockaway Seaside, Oregon stand is filled with vacationers in tennis footwear and ball caps, milling concerning the picnic tables exterior the snack; children climb onto the mechanical corn canine sitting exterior the entrance door, mounted with a saddle for them to experience.

Some guests faucet their ft in opposition to the black-and-white tiles of the restaurant, perched by a merchandise show with shirts that scream “I rode the corndog” or “You’ll be able to’t beat our corndogs.” Some sit by the window, biting into cornmeal-crusted hog canines, pickles, and cheese between handfuls of Tater Tots. Behind the entrance counter, workers dunk all-beef scorching canines and sausages in a bucket filled with batter, then drop every coated frank in a fryer till it emerges hazelnut brown. The end result: a juicy, snappy canine in a thick, fluffy, cornmeal crust.

Relying on the way you outline a corn canine, the Authentic Pronto Pup is one in all America’s first, though a corn canine and a Pronto Pup will not be precisely the identical factor. They’re each sausages or scorching canines on a stick, dunked in a batter with cornmeal and fried. However purists are fast to notice {that a} Pronto Pup isn’t overtly candy like Texas corn canines, the sort diners can discover at state or county gala’s throughout the nation. The Pronto Pup batter — which features a mix of cornmeal, wheat flour, and rice flour — is deliberately fairly savory; for comparability, a beef corn canine from Sizzling Canine on a Stick comprises 6 grams of sugar, whereas a Pronto Pup comprises round 3 grams. They’ve much less cornmeal of their batter than another varieties, which retains the outside extraordinarily ethereal and crisp.

The Pronto Pup location in Rockaway Seaside bought 29,946 unique Pronto Pups in 2023, to not point out all the different riffs — Louisiana spicy, smoked sausage — however Pronto Pup isn’t remoted to Oregon’s coastal scorching canine shacks. Pronto Pups have been bought at gala’s and festivals across the nation because the Forties, in locations like Memphis, Idaho, and Minnesota.

Even with the nationwide acclaim, nevertheless, for those who ask the typical Portlander a couple of Pronto Pup, they may not know what you’re speaking about. Regardless of their Oregonian roots, Pronto Pups don’t have practically the title recognition of, say, a cheesesteak in Philadelphia or a po’ boy in New Orleans. Nonetheless, ask a Minnesotan a couple of Pronto Pup, and so they’ll seemingly have one thing to say: In line with vendor Gregg Karnis, his household’s Pronto Pup enterprise at the Minnesota State Truthful sells between 34 and 36 tons of hog canines at eight stands over the 12 days of the truthful. Karnis has bought Pronto Pups on the Minnesota State Truthful for 58 years; his father, Jack Karnis, introduced the primary Pronto Pup franchise east of the Rockies, promoting them in Chicago within the early Forties. The Karnises later introduced them to the Minnesota State Truthful, the place they’ve been an annual custom for 80 years, gnawed on by Presidential candidates and native celebrities.

So how did the Oregonian Pronto Pup grow to be a Minnesota hometown hero, and why doesn’t it resonate as powerfully in Oregon?

Figuring out a clearly outlined creator of the corn canine is hard. Cornbread-wrapped scorching canines have some ancestors amongst German immigrants in Texas, in response to Alton Brown; nevertheless, they seemingly didn’t contain a stick, extra intently resembling a croquette. The Krusty Korn Sausage Pan, patented within the early twentieth century, was meant to assist folks make cornbread-wrapped sausages at house, however they had been baked. Within the late Twenties, Stanley Jenkins filed a patent for a “mixed dipping, cooking, and article holding equipment,” used for deep-frying meals on a stick, together with wieners; in response to The Takeout, it doesn’t seem to be Jenkins used his invention for business achieve and he didn’t generate profits from his patent. The Oregon Encyclopedia notes {that a} columnist alluded to a “corn canine” at a Dallas restaurant within the late Thirties. The encyclopedia doesn’t title the precise restaurant or columnist, nevertheless, and there’s no proof that the unique column exists on the web.

It wasn’t till 1939 that George and Versa Boyington, who operated an Oregon Coast scorching canine stand, got here up with their thought for the Pronto Pup. Essentially the most generally instructed story about its origins — George Boyington allegedly instructed two completely different tales — attributes its invention to the rain: In true Oregon style, a downpour had ruined the Boyingtons’ scorching canine buns, and the 2 started engaged on a method to create a bun they might make themselves on the fly. They developed a batter over the course of two years, and in 1941, the couple lastly served their first cornmeal-dipped Pronto Pup in Portland. On the Pacific Worldwide Livestock Exposition that very same yr — and one full yr earlier than Fletcher’s served the primary “corny canine” on the Texas State Truthful — the Boyingtons bought 15,000 Pronto Pups.

David Sulmonetti grew up consuming Pronto Pups as part of his household enterprise. His father and uncle — Alex and Alfred Sulmonetti, respectively — bought the model from George Boyington in 1950, and David took over the household enterprise within the early 2000s. He has reminiscences of consuming Pronto Pups on the Seaside location within the Nineteen Sixties and ordering them at gala’s all through his childhood. “Most individuals that make Pronto Pups, those which have been going for a very long time, care about making a very good product,” he says. “They use a greater scorching canine, they combine the batter proper, they don’t overcook it, and so they serve it scorching.”

In contrast to many franchised fast-food manufacturers, Pronto Pup offers its franchisees and clients free rein: The Pronto Pup firm makes the batter combine, which it sells to distributors across the nation; how Pronto Pup distributors promote the product is as much as them. Actually, Pronto Pup is a corn canine batter model greater than a series — anybody can purchase Pronto Pup batter and promote Pronto Pups, although a number of unique franchises nonetheless exist across the nation. Actually, the Pronto Pup location in Rockaway Seaside isn’t even a franchise. (The corporate lets the restaurant use the title so long as they solely use Pronto Pup batter.) The Karnis household developed its personal scorching canine recipe for its Pronto Pups, which Bakalars Sausage Firm in Wisconsin makes for them.

A part of Karnis’s success additionally has to do with longevity. Pronto Pups arrived on the Minnesota State Truthful in 1947, just some years after the primary had been bought within the Midwest. “There was nothing prefer it,” he says. “The Minnesota State Truthful was the primary state truthful to have Pronto Pup, and it was a phenomenon from the very starting.”

Truthful tradition in Minnesota is severe enterprise. The Minnesota State Truthful is the second-largest state truthful in america; it’s solely topped by Texas, which is corny canine territory, with a state truthful that now sees round greater than 2 million guests annually. Minnesotans are deeply loyal to their chosen scorching canine on a stick — both die-hard corn canine or Pronto Pup followers — and there appears to be a transparent winner. “It’s a multi-generational factor,” Sulmonetti says of the Pronto Pup fervor in Minnesota. “For his or her mother and father, their grandparents, a part of the deal of going to the truthful is that you just’ve gotta have a Pronto Pup when you’re there.”

Oregon, in the meantime, doesn’t have the identical state truthful tradition as different components of the nation, significantly Minnesota. Round 346,000 folks went to the Oregon State Truthful in 2022, in comparison with the 1,842,222 who attended the Minnesota State Truthful. And even nonetheless, not each Pronto Pup vendor identifies themselves that manner, in response to Sulmonetti; many promote their Pronto Pup-battered franks as corn canines. “In Oregon, a variety of the folks I promote the combination to, they don’t essentially name them Pronto Pups, which pains me,” he says. “They don’t need to get into the entire ‘What’s a Pronto Pup’ factor.”

The Pronto Pup isn’t the one Pacific Northwestern meals to be championed by the Midwest. In 1953, F. Nephi Grigg invented the Tater Tot in Ontario, Oregon as a method to reuse the potato scraps produced by french fry firm Ore-Ida. Whereas Oregon has its personal Tater Tot tradition — significantly within the type of totchos, or Tater Tot nachos — it’s much more generally related to the Midwestern hotdish. Even tuna noodle casserole first appeared in a 1930 problem of Sundown, attributed to a “Mrs. W. F. S.” from Kennewick, Washington.

“So many of those traditional, indelibly American meals come from the Northwest,” says Heather Arndt Anderson, the meals author behind OPB’s Superabundant publication, which covers the tales behind a few of Oregon’s most beloved substances and meals. Anderson has lined the state’s meals traditions and historical past extensively, together with in her e book Portland: A Meals Biography. She has a number of theories for why Oregonian meals are likely to resonate in different components of the nation, most associated to the climate and related agricultural situations. However actually, she sees Oregon as a state that pulls weirdos — together with very clever, creative ones. “Oregon is the Wild West,” she says. “That is the area of the nation the place essentially the most fringe concepts are likely to take root.”

Nonetheless, Oregon isn’t generally known as the birthplace of those dishes exterior of the state — and even right here. Whereas Oregonians love and cherish these meals, it is a state whose inhabitants is continually in flux. As of 2018, lower than half of all Oregon residents had been born in Oregon, in comparison with round two-thirds of Minnesotans. Minnesota is a “stickier” state; in different phrases, folks born there have a tendency to remain. In line with a 2023 research, 70.9 p.c of the folks born in Minnesota nonetheless lived there in 2021; in the identical yr, Minnesota had 5 p.c much less out-migration in comparison with Oregon. These traits might clarify why Oregon’s rising and shifting inhabitants doesn’t have the identical institutional appreciation for distinctly Oregonian nostalgia.

In Anderson’s perspective, the state’s ever-changing id has, satirically, been a relentless over the course of Oregon’s historical past: the fur commerce and timber trade attracted eclectic teams of individuals from all over the world within the state’s earliest days — some who settled down, some who labored a single season, and a few who got here to get wealthy rapidly and go away. In consequence, Oregon has a low provide of multi-generational households and eating places retaining particular regional dishes alive. The state’s meals tradition has shifted often over time; extra saliently, a lot of its culinary richness lies within the meals it grows and harvests. “Oregon doesn’t have an official meals,” Anderson says. “However we do have Indigenous foodways, issues like salmon and huckleberries.”

These Indigenous foodways — the produce that grows natively right here, the animals present in our forests and rivers — have grow to be defining components of the world’s meals tradition greater than any particular potato dish or deep-fried snack. Even past native meals, Oregon’s agricultural status has grow to be a defining side of its culinary profile: This state is understood for its farmers and the cooks depending on them, referenced in now-grating Portlandia sketches; lists of the state’s most well-known meals usually embrace issues like marionberries, hazelnuts, and seafood. It is sensible: Even when the human inhabitants modifications, morels will emerge out of the ash of wildfires. Strawberries will develop as volunteers in deserted gardens and woodlands.

And but, Pronto Pup’s devotees — whether or not they’re multi-generational Oregonians or new residents — will skip the Oregon hazelnuts and salmon sweet on the coast, and as a substitute go to the corn canine’s birthplace. Some will arrive as early as 10 a.m. on Saturday mornings, the identical manner they’d begin a day on the truthful with a breakfast Pup. Diane Langer, the co-owner and proprietor of the Pronto Pup location in Rockaway Seaside, bought the enterprise in 2021 with out figuring out concerning the model’s cult following; she says numerous Minnesota vacationers will make a pilgrimage to Pronto Pup, in addition to Oregonians and guests from locations like Idaho and Florida. Langer herself isn’t from Oregon; she splits her time between the Oregon Coast and her house in Washington state.

Though the id of the state has shifted, these shifting to Oregon usually carry their very own house state traditions with them — together with the Pronto Pup.

“After I’m out working at completely different occasions, I’ll run into folks from Idaho who know Pronto Pups from Idaho, or Michigan, or the Memphis space,” Sulmonett says. “Folks love nostalgia, ?”