Itinerary: Hot Dogs and Beer

If there’s nothing more American than baseball and apple pie, why don’t they serve apple pie at baseball games? Because baseball stadiums are the hard-core turf of hot dogs and beer.

So as the Dodgers and Angels take up their bats, take a tour of spots related to the two Major League food groups.

Friday

Microbreweries are nice, but let’s face it, to quench Americans’ massive thirst for beer--we consume about 6 billion gallons a year--we need megabreweries.

For a sense of scale, drive past the Anheuser-Busch brewery (15800 Roscoe Blvd., Van Nuys, [818] 989-5300). Visible from the 405 freeway, this huge brewery has a daily production of 600,000 cases of beer, about two-thirds of which is cans; the rest, bottles.

When the brewery opened in 1954, the 90-acre lot also held a Busch Gardens theme park, but that was closed in 1979 to make room for more beer production. These days, in addition to Budweiser, the plant also produces Kirin Brewery Co.’s Japanese beers.

For dinner, try Barbara’s at the Brewery (620 Moulton Ave., Suite 110, downtown L.A., [323] 221-9204; open Monday to Friday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.), a restaurant in the complex that used to be the Pabst Blue Ribbon brewery but is now an artists’ colony. They’ll serve wine and cocktails with dinner, too, not just beer.

Then hit one of our area’s microbrew pubs. The Yard House (401 Shoreline Village Drive, Long Beach, [562] 628-0455) keeps 250 microbrews on tap. Or, over at Crown City Brewery (300 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena, [626] 577-5548), you can try one of the beers they brew on the spot. Three or four are always available.

Saturday

Now, the hot dog. It apparently dates back to the 15th or 16th century, though the sausage predates that by 3,000 years. The first “dachshund”--little dog sausage--arrived in the United States along with the European immigrants of the 1860s.

It was during a Giants game at New York’s Polo Grounds in 1901 that concessionaire Harry Stevens hawked the first “red hot” because it was too cold that day for ice cream or soda. In 1904, at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, another concessionaire came up with the long soft roll--and it’s been the perfect stadium food ever since.

Besides the Dodger Dog, the most famous hot dog in Los Angeles undeniably comes from Pink’s Famous Chili Dogs (709 N. La Brea Ave., Hollywood, [323] 931-4223). Its renown comes from its just-off-Melrose location and late-night hours (until 2 a.m. most nights, 3 a.m. on weekends). Pink’s has served the same hot dogs covered in chili, chopped onions and mustard to everyone from the famous to the homeless since 1939.

And we don’t mean to take away from Pink’s, but there are those who would insist that there’s a better hot dog over the hill at Rubin’s Red Hots (15322 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, [818] 905-6515; open daily 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.). The Big Red is the thing to order--a kosher dog with dill pickle, red onion, relish mustard, celery salt and chili pepper--all on an onion and poppy seed bun.

Sunday

Cap the weekend with the complete experience: a game at Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers take on the New York Yankees on Sunday at 1:10 p.m. in an exhibition game. The beer is nothing to write home about, save maybe the shocking price, but Dodger Dogs have made die-hard fans: In 1997, 2.2 million were sold. For those who prefer a dog that bites back: Try the red hots.

For the more nutritionally picky, you can also get sushi in the upstairs cafeteria. Sushi. In a ballpark. Don’t you just love L.A.?