Watup Dogg

I went here to relive my year in the islands, and left thinking I would have rather eaten black sand.
Watup Dogg is an attempt to make money off of the popular Puka Dog concept from Hawaii. Puka Dog is a Hawaii original found on Kauai and Oahu (perhaps other island locations by now) where they GRILL polish sausages over flame, stick them in a uniquely made roll that has a hole toasted in it lengthwise (Puka = hole in Hawaiian), and put freshly made exotic relishes/​salsas inside with the sausage to deliver a one of a kind taste found only in Hawaii.
Watup Dogg took this independent and original concept and, in my opinion, is trying to «McDonaldize» and mainland it, which is completely ruining the idea. First of all, the dog is grilled on a 7 – 11 type «grill». You know the ones that I’m talking about. Secondly, the roll is nowhere near as hearty as the rolls in Hawaii, and can’t stand up to the dog and the sauce inside of them. Thirdly, the sauces are a complete joke. The relishes in Hawaii are freshly made with local ingredients. A sauce that has mango in the name actually has chunks of mango in it. Papaya? Yeah, you’ll be biting down on freshly cut up papaya. At Watup all of the sauces are smooth, like someone from a factory pushed the «Add mango flavor crystals» button at the factory and now you have some bastardized version of a mango relish.
Avoid this place. Trust me. Save your money and travel to Hawaii for the original. It will be worth the trip.

Horrible. Instead of writing a review I’d rather go curl up in a ball in bed and forget that I ever ate a Watup Dogg hot dog, but in order to spare others the experience, I’ll struggle through it. For you.
1. A 7 – 11 quality boiled ‘hot dog’ rolling around on a warmer waiting for someone to pluck it off IS NOT a Polish sausage. Not being a turkey dog or a veggie dog (the other choices on the menu) also DOES NOT make it a Polish sausage. It is what it is, which is a mealy, spammy tasting boiled ‘hot dog’ such that one can find in any freezer section of Safeway.
Given the gross hot dog, there should at least be some damn tasty sauces available to drown it in. A glance at the menu seems promising: there’s mango ketchup, habanero ketchup, lemon garlic sauce, wasabi pineapple mustard, tropical aloha (whatever that means), and others as well as traditional hot dog fixings. Now, while I generally am a traditionalist and eat my dogs Chicago style, the #1 (fittingly called the Watup Dogg) with mango ketchup, lemon garlic sauce, and wasabi pineapple mustard caught my eye and that’s what I got. Which leads me to…
2. If you call something ‘mango ketchup’ there should probably be mango in the ketchup and it probably shouldn’t just taste like Heinz. Accordingly, if you say there’s lemon garlic on something you should probably be able to taste either lemon or garlic. AND, if you say there’s wasabi in something, and the wasabi is undetectable, there’s NO WAY THERE’S WASABI IN IT, because wasabi is not a subtle, delicate flavor!
Watup Dogg serves their hot dogs in a sort of pocket, with a hole in one end for the dog and the sauces. I thought this was a neat idea — no spillage, everything stays put and it’s easy to eat. Except that…
3. The bread is so weak that the hot dog breaks through the other end in a matter of seconds. On my first bite, the hot dog shot backwards, punctured the soggy end of the bun, and all the sauce spewed out of the bun and pooled in the bottom of the wrapper. Lucky me really, since I ended up not having to suck down the giant amount of sauce.
I can honestly say that it is an extreme rarity for me not to finish my food — apparitions of my family are always on one shoulder, reminding me that if I don’t eat it I… GASP… wasted MONEY. I have no opposing apparitions on the other shoulder, so there’s no contest and the result is I virtually always finish my food or take it home and finish it there.
Guess what? I threw away half this hot dog. Even my family apparitions were silent; they knew that even the threat of wasting money pales in comparison to plain old nasty, gag reflex-​inducing food.
Afterwards I had to go to Jamba Juice on campus and get the most citrusy drink possible to numb and restart my tastebuds.