Fab’s Hot Dogs, the San Fernando Valley dog house, is moving to a bigger location down the street this spring (or summer). The sausage slingers, slammed since the exposure on Food TV’s Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, needed desperately to expand out of their tiny, nine seat hole in the wall.  The owners confirmed today that they signed a new lease in the Loehmann’s Plaza, down the street from their current Reseda location.

Seating will expand, parking will improve, and hopefully, so will the wait to get a couple of dogs. What makes this place special? For starters, this is L.A.’s only place to get a ripper, a deep fried dog famous in its native New Jersey. Want a grilled dog? Steamed dog? A bacon wrapped street dog? A pastrami dog? Also – tater tots.

Fabs Hot Dogs
Now:
6747 Tampa Ave.
Reseda, CA 91335
818-344-4336

Starting Spring or Summer 2010:
In the Loehmann’s Plaza Shopping Center
Tampa Avenue and Victory Boulevard
Reseda, CA

It’s like when two people you know would hit it off finally meet. This week, Pulitzer Prize winning food writer Jonathon Gold happened (finally) upon my BBQ contest teammate Neil Strawder’s BBQ stand at the Atwater’s Farmers Market. It’s only been a year since Neil quit his banking career to run BigMista’s BBQ full time, Mr. Gold. <\eyeroll>.

Neil tells me that J Gold stopped by at 1:30pm, long after almost everything was sold out. He scraped together a few leftover pieces of meat and made an impromptu sampler plate. Not the best way to impress L.A.’s most influential food critic, perhaps, but what can you do?

In this week’s Squid Ink blog on the LA Weekly, Gold said,

If Bigmista could scrounge together a lunch this splendid from scrapings and bin-leavings, I can only marvel at the possibilities afforded by the food he actually means to sell.

Hopefully, my two friends can start spending more time together, and get to know each other better. If anyone can appreciate the wonders of real BBQ, it’s these two. Congratulations, Neil, for the well deserved props.

Trickest tailgating vehicle ever, if you’re young, male, and Asian. Two out of three ain’t bad in my case.

Kogi BBQ Scion

Toyota built a show car with a built in grill, refrigerator, and sink for the 2009 car show circuit inspired by their friends at the Kogi BBQ truck. See the story at the LA Times

After all these years of torturing you with pretty photos from my barbecue contests, I sincerely hope you’ve had the chance to go to one in person and eat the great food that my contest peers cook.

If you haven’t been to one, tune in to BBQ Pitmasters, TLC’s brand new series that airs tonight at 10pm across all time zones.  It’ll give an insider’s view of  competition BBQ at some of the biggest contests in America.

My friends Harry Soo and Mark Tung of Slap Yo’ Daddy BBQ, featuring pit bitch Gary Notley star in this series. They’re the only team from west of Texas cast for the show, and will be challenging some of the behemoths of the contest BBQ world. Harry and Mark came out of nowhere two years ago, and have won one grand champion title after another. There’s no journalistic detachment on this one – I’ll be rooting for Slap Yo’ Daddy all the way!