Gray's Papaya Recession Special

Gray's Papaya, the open-all-night hot dog joint with a line that snakes in one door and out the other, has sold a "Recession Special" for as long as anyone can remember. The Recession Special consists of two hot dogs, canonically topped with sweet red onion relish, and a tropical juice of choice, the standard choice being, despite the establishment's name, pineapple juice and not papaya. Here's how to make your own Recession Special at home.

As far back as I can remember, Gray's Papaya has had a Recession Special. I can attest that the "recession" part of the special goes back at least to the nineties recession, though I suspect it kicked off during the seventies—Gray's Papaya opened in 1973. In a typically New York twist of fate, Gray's Papaya is actually a spin-off of the original tropical-juice-and-cheap-hot-dog concept, which was pioneered by Papaya King. (The whole saga is hilariously chronicled by Street Meat Nation.) Gray's Papaya, notwithstanding, has achieved the distinction of being considered the "original and best" among the average New Yorker, in large part due to their strategically located branches, most of which are closed now. Back in the day, there was a branch right by NYU, obviously attracting hungry and/or drunk college students like moths to a flame.

Gray's Papaya sweet, red onion hot dog relish

The secret sauce of the Recession Special is, literally, the secret sauce. A special investigation turned up the surprising fact that the sweet red onion relish that characterized the Gray's Papaya dog is actually the very same Sabrett's relish that all the city hot dog carts sell. There's nothing special about it, except that it comes standard on the two extra-long dogs that you can get for $6.95 in 2020 dollars, juice included. And that, of course, makes it mandatory for our re-creation.

To make the sauce, you brown up some chopped sweet onions; by the "red" in the name is adjectival to the sauce, not the onions themselves—you want sweet Vidalia onions here. Let the onions soften and just begin to brown, but you want them to still has a little kick to them, like so:

Then you deglaze with some vinegar and add tomato paste, spices, some cornstarch to thicken it up, a bit of water, and, not to be missed, a touch of hot sauce and sweetener. For the full downmarket flavor, you'd use corn syrup as the sweetener, but you can also upscale and use honey. Also, fry up the onions in margarine for buttery (but not) mouthfeel. In the recipe below, I call for a combo of margarine and neutral-flavored oil because I find margarine alone burns too easily.

Recession Special finishing touches

Other than the relish, it's all a matter of mimicking the hot dog grill setup that they have at Gray's Papaya, which is one of those stainless steel deals with grooves in it for the hot dogs. I've settled on boiling the hot dogs (street cart style) and then putting them in a hot oven for just a few minutes. For bonus points, see if you can track down some extra-long dogs, and, of course, squishy store-bought buns, split at the sides.

As for the tropical drink, I spent an overlong time hunting for the Gray's Papaya smoothie formula only to turn up the memory that it's just pineapple juice, not a smoothie. Now my family considers pineapple juice a mandatory accompaniment to hot dog night, so, mission accomplished.