Franks sets tongues awagging in the West Bottoms
The West Bottoms has always been the color of beef. Dan Clothier wants to change that.
The fresh flowers dotting the picnic tables in front of his restaurant and the bright-yellow awning adorning the façade are among the visible updates to the gritty neighborhood that once held Kansas City’s stockyards.
Clothier also is adding a few shades of pork to the old cattle grounds. His nine-month-old Franks (1623 Genessee) sells hot dogs – pork-and-beef hot dogs.
“We all remember that perfect hot dog from our youth,” he says. But turning that idyllic childhood meal into the simplest lunch an adult can get in this part of the city requires some sophisticated butchery. For Clothier, 67, that means a pork-and-beef mixture tailored to each hot dog, footlong wiener and “über dög” (a 10-inch bat that weighs 6 ounces) on the menu. “There’s a lot going on in that simple $2 hot dog,” he says. Enough that Franks could have fed the hungriest industrial workers of another era.
