OT: Benny's

I get the sentiment here, but let me take you on a bit of a cultural journey -- granted, this is Southeastern Michigan culture, so you may want to bring one of those SARS/air pollution masks the US Olympic Swimming team was lambasted for wearing when they stepped off of their plane.

My friend, a Coney Island is not a "diner."  That is bullshit disinformation perpetrated by those who were not unfortunate enough to be born and raised in Michigan.  If you're from Michigan, "pop" is a delicious sparkly beverage, "up north" is where you go for vacation, and "Coney Island" has nothing to do with depressing, dillapidated real estate in New York.

Sort of.

Nobody can really seem to pinpoint the exact origin of the first "true" Coney, but regardless of whichever business's story you believe, it all starts in the early 1900s with the Coney Dog.  Greek immigrants settling in Detroit began opening their own Greek-themed restaurants just outside of Downtown, which featured -- you guessed it -- Coney Island chili dogs instead of just flaming cheese and paintings of dudes in togas.

As the story goes, the original proprietors of both American Coney Island and Lafayette Coney Island in Downtown Detroit featured the chili dog for which their restaurants were named because on the way to Michigan, they had stopped in New York for a few days, and had these delicious chili dogs at a stand just outside of Coney Island.  When they settled, they tried to recreate those chili dogs, opened their own restaurants, and, well, they failed to trademark the name "Coney Island," thus allowing hundreds of other immigrants with dreams of using their children for slave labor to open their own Coney Island restaurants in the area -- and so it was, poor late-night drunken decision-making would no longer be relegated to only issues of transportation and sexual conquest, but also to nutrition ("Oh man, three Coneys with extra chili and mustard would be great right before bed!").

Of course, there's a giant hole in the story.  Where did the original Coney Dogs come from?  Does anyone know the name of the hot dog stand, or the guy?  If you ask most Brooklyn residents, they couldn't tell you -- but they could probably point you in the direction of a few "Michigan Hot Dog" stands.

What's a "Michigan Hot Dog," you ask?  Well, a Michigan Hot Dog is basically a Coney Dog.  Except the sauce is less of a bean-based chili and is more of a tomato sauce.  Gross.  Anyway, as the story goes with the Michigan Hot Dog, a couple of tourists were travelling through Michigan on their way back to New York and had these great chili dogs, and just had to bring them back to New York.  When they got back, they opened a restaurant, and the Michigan Hot Dog stand revolution was born!

That doesn't really detangle the origin of the Coney, though, I guess.

Todoroff's of Jackson, MI -- famous for their Coney Dogs and for being shut down about 6 months ago for sexual harrassment of female employees on the part of management -- claims that the elder-most Todoroff, George Todoroff (who actually had no parents and just materialized out of thin air in Chuck Norris-like fashion) invented the world-famous chili sauce that would become both the basis for the modern Coney Dog as well as the Michigan Hot Dog in New York.  Of course, I have my doubts about this story as well, especially since according to Todoroff lore, the tourists from New York who sampled their recipe referred to Mr. Todoroff's hot dogs as "Jackson Island Hot Dogs," which makes absolutely no fucking sense since Jackson isn't located on an island, and is mostly famous for having at one point the largest prison in the world, moreso than hot dogs, anyway.

So in closing, a Coney is a chili dog, a Coney Island is a restaurant that serves Coneys (and anything covered in tzatziki), a diner is not a Coney Island, a Coney Island is not a diner, and New York and Michigan are from apparently alternate universes (although New York is clearly the evil, goateed version).

Greek cuisine in your face, son.