“Two of my favorite things… A Lyric hot dog with special sauce and the majestic Alabama Theater in Birmingham Alabama.”

Since 1957, Lyric Hot Dogs & Grill has been serving some of Downtown’s best hot dogs to the best customers in town. Also, great grits & a big breakfast, all kinds of sandwiches and a tasty Greek salad! Right across the street from the Historic Alabama Theatre.

The Lyric is open from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. weekdays and 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Saturdays, serving breakfast, lunch, and early dinner. The restaurant’s specialty hot dog has a base of mustard and pickles covered with onions and chili. More Information…

Ask a sampling of Birminghamians about the city’s signature cuisine and you’re likely to hear about slow-cooked barbecue or pimento cheese sandwiches, maybe Greek-style broiled snapper, fried green tomatoes, or orange rolls. Perhaps even the grilled lamb shoulder and crushed potatoes from Highlands Bar & Grill. As a student of Birmingham’s history, however, I’m casting my vote for the traditional Birmingham hot dog.

Since debuting as hand-sized fair food on Coney Island a year before Birmingham was founded, Wiener Würstchen on soft buns have become a staple of the working man’s diet. And once Birmingham got going as a boom town in the 1880s, there was growing demand for quick, More Information…

Although the history of sausage goes back a long way, hot dogs are as American as apple pie. There is no certain etiology of the term hot dog, but two theories are the most prominent.

The popularity of the term hot dog is generally attributed to sports cartoonist T. A. “Tad” Dorgan, who caricatured German figures as dachshund dogs just after the turn of the 19th century. His talking sausage cartoons generally denigrated the cheap wieners sold at Coney Island, crassly suggesting they contained dogmeat. It was such bad publicity that in 1913, the Chamber of Commerce actually banned use of the term “hog dog” from signs on Coney Island. The term actually first appeared in print in the More Information…