SARASOTA – A family restaurant celebrates 50 years on the Suncoast.
Hot Diggity Dog has been serving up their famous Coney Island Dogs for half a century. Sarasota native and Co-Owner David Mastos says his late mother put the restaurant on the map, working the counter until she was 82. The restaurant has a unique story, that goes back to a Coney Dog stand his family loved in Pennsylvania.
“They went and asked them if they could buy the chili sauce in bulk and they said no, so what they did is bought like 50 hot dogs, scraped all the sauce off, froze it, brought it to Sarasota, and reverse engineered the sauce,” Mastos said.
He says they’ve been serving that same recipe since Hot Diggity Dog’s beginning in 1970. The restaurant is located at 5666 Swift Rd. in Sarasota.
