Filmmaker Takes Hot Dog Tour of Connecticut

When Mark Kotlinski was moving back to Connecticut from New York City, he thought, what better way to get reacclimated with the state than visit one-of-a-kind hot dog joints?

The end result was "A Connecticut Hot Dog Tour," which Kotlinski, a freelance video producer and editor, tells the New London Day is a "delicious documentary of Connecticut's hot dog culture."

Featured dogs include floating hot dog stands (Weiners on Water, an establishment on a boat on the Connecticut River in East Haddam), dogs from Kotlinski's childhood (Capitol Lunch in New Britain) and dogs in southeastern Connecticut (Bobby's Place II in Sound View in Old Lyme, which is now closed, and the original Bobby's Place on Pennsylvania Avenue in Niantic, which is still open.)

The Documentary Channel has picked up his project and will start airing it on Saturday.

The Day spoke with Kotlinski over the phone to find out what it is about hot dogs that made him devote eight months of his life to documenting them.

"It's very portable, and it's quick. but it's good. I also think it has to do with a lot of European people coming to the state - Germans, Polish, and they're really raised on eating sausage and things like that. And just putting it in bread makes it really portable."

When it came to choosing the featured eateries, Kotlinski said he wanted to show people a "cross-section" of places around the state. He told The Day he wanted to find places that hadn't seen much exposure, he said he wanted to surprise people.

When asked how many hot dogs he consumed during the making of the documentary, Kotlinski's answer was "entirely too many." He said the trick was limiting himself to one hot dog in each place to split between the crew.

If you want to sample Connecticut's hot dogs, without getting a stomach ache, Kotlinski says The DVD is available on Amazon and at www.ctoriginals.com.

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