Ballard hot-dog vendor capitalizes on nightlife, need for a late-night bite

By Marc Ramirez
Seattle Times staff reporter

ROD MAR / THE SEATTLE TIMES Dante Rivera prepares a bratwurst for a patron at his hot-dog cart, Dante's Inferno Dogs. Rivera said he is proud of the $8,000 cart he purchased to run his Ballard business, which sells dogs and soda. To give his cart a personal touch, Rivera has added family photos, music and occasionally lights candles at night.

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

Related stories Seattle lacks meaty offerings for hot dogs

People sometimes wonder why a hot-dog vendor would insist on applying the condiments himself. A few are even taken aback.

To them, Dante Rivera says: Look at this cart. Does it look like any other cart?

You would have to agree that it does not. Rivera's sausage wagon gleams under the street lamps like some silvery NASA moon unit. On its surface is the neat lineup of toppings that, by design, only he can handle.

A lesser vendor would be unkempt. A lesser man would be satisfied with a $2,500 cart and a marker-scrawled menu, but not Rivera. Go first-class, his father always said, so Rivera went out and dropped eight grand on a shiny, top-of-the-line cart he found online. It cost three times any car he'd ever owned.

He is very proud of his cart.

Street vendors aren't easy to find in Seattle. You might more easily locate a Mariners jersey in Manhattan. But against the odds is Dante's Inferno Dogs — lunch option by light, late-night munchies wagon by dark. (And caterer by appointment.)

Four years ago, when he launched his enterprise, he chose to go where few street vendors had gone before: Ballard. Some questioned his judgment, but that was before a neighborhood renaissance turned once-sleepy streets into a kennel of activity.

Hot-dog trivia Hot dogs are thought to have originated with the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, but sausages had been served in European countries, especially Germany (hence the term "franks"), for centuries. Other accounts say German immigrants first served up hot dogs (with sauerkraut) in New York City. The actual term "hot dog" supposedly originated with a New York Evening Journal sports cartoonist who couldn't spell "dachshund" — the ballpark's term for its frankfurters — and invented the name instead. Americans eat 2 billion pounds worth of hot dogs annually (most between Memorial Day and Labor Day). Japan's Takeru Kobayashi set the world record for speed hot-dog eating in July 2004, consuming 53-1/2 dogs in 12 minutes. Sources: Los Angeles Times, TutorGig.com, whatscookingamerica.net

During the day you'll find him at Bergen Place Park or the Ballard Farmers Market, but it's his late weekend shifts on Ballard Avenue that customers relish most, his cart's bright red awning a flame to which barflies are drawn.

BY 10 P.M. ON A FRIDAY, his cart sits in a vacant lot between two rollicking nightspots, Hattie's Hat and the Tractor Tavern. Josie, his Lab mix — "the real hot dog," he says — is leashed to the grille of his nearby pickup, happily eyeing passers-by.

Tonight's first customer is Steve Smith, co-host of KEXP-FM's "Shake The Shack" rockabilly show. Fresh from the Tractor, he wants a chicken sausage with everything. "Except jalapeños," he says, words pouring out like ketchup. "Oh, maybe two jalapeños ... Dos jalapeños, por favor."

At $5, it's pricier than most; dogs are $2.50.

"Look at this," Smith admires. "It's a salad on a bun. How can you do any better than that? It's like Dick's Drive-In on two wheels."

Dante Enrique Rivera is a half-Mexican, half-Dutch guy from Detroit, where his dad owned a company making pizza-delivery equipment. For a while he lived a stray-dog life, hitchhiking, living out of a duffel bag, occasionally sleeping on piers.

When he was 19, he read "A Confederacy of Dunces," the novel for which John Kennedy Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize and whose obnoxious main character, Ignatius J. Reilly, fails miserably as a hot-dog vendor. Nevertheless, the enterprise had a certain charm; "it felt like something I'd like to do," Rivera says.

	Dante Rivera applies mustard to one of his hot dogs. Rivera, who sells hot dogs from his cart in Ballard, applies the fixings to each of the dogs himself.

A buddy's wedding brought him to Seattle in 1995, and he persuaded his father to let him open a West Coast company office. He lived in the warehouse and showered at the gym. But when his parents divorced, his operation tanked, and he launched the Fresh Start Cafe at a local athletic club.

Working 70-hour weeks, he barely turned a profit. Still, the experience grounded him in basics of management, product supply and bureaucracy. For years the hot-dog cart had been a backburner dream, but with his juice bar struggling, it now seemed like a recipe worth cooking up.

Dante's Inferno Dogs is one of 432 county-licensed mobile-food operations, including espresso trucks and taco trucks. The Ballard resident has towed his cart as far south as Olympia, as far north as Bellingham. "She handles real nice up and down I-5," he says. "I load her up with soda pop to keep the center of gravity low."

HIS DOGS ARE Boar's Head beef franks, he says proudly, and his sausages come from Ballard-based Cascioppo Bros. Fans note that his franks snap when bitten — a trademark of Big Apple-style hot dogs, which New Yorkers call "dirty dogs," or "dirty water dogs," in wry reference to the gritty, street-side vending location.

Anybody can serve up a hot dog, Rivera says. To him, it's the little details — the free lollipops, crackling boombox, the photomontage of family, the occasional candles at night.

The 34-year-old captains his ship with a near fastidious fervor, applying the fixings (in generous fashion) himself so late-night drunks won't poke through the mix.

	ROD MAR / THE SEATTLE TIMES Well past midnight on a recent Friday night, Rivera continues business, selling hot dogs to those leaving two of Ballard's nightspots.

Yes, he's heard the one about the Zen master, who tells the hot-dog vendor: "Make me one with everything." No less than a thousand times, he guesses, along with its lesser-known finish: Zen master pays with a $20 bill, which the vendor stuffs into the cash drawer. Zen master asks, "Where's my change?" Vendor responds: "Remember — change must come from within."

He refused at first to carry diet soda or veggie dogs but finally caved. Early this year, as a nod to carb-conscious diets, he introduced dogs on skewers. Also available is cream cheese, something he'd never heard of on hot dogs before Seattle.

Personable and polite, he figures repeat customers are 80 percent of his clientele, including the staffs of nearby bars and a pair he refers to as "the best looking couple in all of Ballard." Couples have met at his cart and still date; the woman he's currently seeing was a customer, too.

"Really, any relationship I've had over the last four years is because of that cart," he says.

IT'S AFTER 1 A.M. that business really picks up, a hot-dog last call. There's Dan, a regular, at 1:45 a.m. "Hey, Dan, how ya doin'?" Rivera says.

"I think I'm ready for a dog," Dan says.

The rockabilly show at the Tractor is emptying out in a sprinkling of rolled-up cuffs and dark pointy shoes, and Rivera is looking a little weathered and disheveled, his eyelids heavy. But he's still there 15 minutes later, with half a dozen buzz-kill seekers in line. He sees this as a community service, he says, a way for people to sober up before driving home.

"He was a lifesaver," says a grateful Roxanne Cousin of Salt Lake City, downing a dog in a nearby doorway. "I haven't had anything to eat all day. I wouldn't eat hot dogs, regularly, but right now — the unknown ingredients absorb all the alcohol."

It's 2:30 a.m. Back at the cart, one desperado asks whether Rivera takes credit cards. (He doesn't.) Nearby, the last of Ballard's nightlife clusters in a grazing herd of leather and Western wear, peaceful as cows on a California hillside.

"He's the last resort," says the lead singer of budding band Heartbreak USA, supplying the catchy name of Sabrina Rockarena. "He's the last chance."

Marc Ramirez: 206-464-8102 or mramirez@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

E-mail this article

Print this article

Search archive

More living headlines...