I made a pilgrimage to Oki Dog this evening. There are a number of Oki Dog restaurants, but the only one I've been to is on Fairfax. It's a squat, shoddy structure that looks like a beach restroom painted pink but otherwise left to the mercy of the elements. There's nothing to recommend it from the outside, but it houses one of the most singular eating experiences of my life.
Note here that "singular" is not a synonym for "good."
The dish in question is the eponymous Oki Dog. It is massive and terrible to behold. Start with two hot dogs, boiled into rubbery submission, a corpse of a corpse. Add perfect squares of shining American cheese, and bury them in predigested-looking canned chili. Then, the pastrami. A slab of gristly pink pastrami joins the grease mound, and everything is wrapped in a massive tortilla, a tortilla upon which the face of Jesus will never appear. The face of Elvis, perhaps, but not Jesus.
If someone could maneuver a punch down your throat and into your stomach, the experience would be something like eating an Oki Dog, provided your assailant's fist was sufficiently salted. The bundle of fat and low-grade protein simultaneously satisfies all appetite while insulting all aesthetics.
I couldn't possibly explain why I eat these, any more than I can explain why they exist. Oki Dog calls to me as I cruise the freeway into LA. I don't think I could eat one anyone else in the world.
A final note: the health department here assigns each restaurant a letter grade, which they are required by law to display prominently. Nearly every restaurant has a big reassuring "A" in the window. At Oki Dog? A slightly crumpled "B." I'm hoping they lost a grade simply by selling a food item so fatty the fumes could kill a gazelle at six paces.
