man through every single day of
Callahan’s Hot Dog’s 2.0 – but we will
get to that.
The Bouwerie also taught DeMiglio
to take the good with the bad. Although
his relationship with Chef
Fabian blossomed, his relationship
with his business partner soured, creating
a divide that ultimately led to the
closing of the Bouwerie in 2014. We
all have that dream of opening a
restaurant with our good friends.
DeMiglio offered the friendly reminder
of “not so fast.”
An even more important lesson,
however, was that DeMiglio could
never escape his family’s Callahan’s
legacy. Patrons of the Bouwerie, as
well as friends and strangers DeMiglio
came across, would always ask him,
“When are you going to open up a
Callahan’s Hot Dogs?”
Finally, it was time for DeMiglio to
give the people what they wanted.
“When I first pitched the idea to my
family and Chef Fabian, who I wanted
“DeMiglio is a big picture guy with
the eccentricity to make you a
‘Callahan’s Kid’ without ever even
biting into one of the nine-inch
hot dogs that started it all in 1950,
igniting the excitement of the kid
inside all of us despite whatever
age we may have been.”
to bring along with me, of reopening
Callahan’s as a food truck, nobody believed
in the idea,” a spirited DeMiglio
tells me over breakfast at Raymond’s
in Ridgewood.
He orders his menu item sans
bacon, which, while sitting across from
the local King of Hot Dogs, struck me
as odd.
“Tell me you’re vegan,” I quipped,
knowing full well there was just no
possible way.
DeMiglio laughed, “Hell no! But
when you’re making truffle gouda
bacon mac and cheese day in and day
out, sometimes you just don’t want to
be around it for a couple hours.”
Speaking with DeMiglio for just a
few minutes, he reminds me a lot of
Kroc portrayed in The Founder by
Michael Keaton. While he’s there with
me telling his story, I can tell he’s also
thinking about his next sensational
menu item, sure to go viral much like
his World Famous Stuffed Mac n’
Cheese Ball Burger. I’m not sure which
came first: labeling it “World Famous”
or it becoming so, with posts and
videos of the oozing burger delight
exceeding the multi-million “views”
mark.
Like Kroc, DeMiglio is a big picture
guy with the eccentricity to make you
a “Callahan’s Kid” without ever even
biting into one of the nine-inch hot
dogs that started it all in 1950, igniting
the excitement of the kid inside all of
us despite whatever age we may have
118 BC The Mag FALL 2018