The Honey Bastard Hot Dog: Cane Rosso's Secret Menu Item (Sort of)

Cane Rosso just can't calm down.

The once-humble Neapolitan pizza empire began when founder Jay Jerrier was looking to kill time during retirement. After a trip to Italy, he began the serious study of pizza. His business started with an oven attached to a trailer, and today there are seven Cane Rosso restaurants across North Texas, plus the New York-style spot Zoli's and the Detriot-style Thunderbirds.

This week, Jerrier and friends are rolling out a Side Hustle Burger roving burger stand (pop-up in modern parlance). The burgers look as hot as Don Johnson posing with an over-the-shoulder sultry glance. Literally, they chose that pose for their Instagram wall.

A keystone across every menu in the Jerrier oeuvre is the Honey Bastard. It's a stone that holds their pizza arch in place. Named for the irrefutable determination of a honey badger (we dream, anyway), Honey Bastard pizzas are topped with mozzarella, hot soppressata, bacon marmalade and habanero honey. The sweet bacon marmalade and honey hit the high notes over the cheese, crisp yet chewy dough and spicy meat. I even remember my first bite of Honey Bastard in Deep Ellum many, many pies ago. We could call it a transformative moment. While walking through a Cane Rosso recently, we spotted a chalkboard sign advertising a Honey Bastard hot dog, which was an emergency break moment. After asking the bartender if that chalkboard was being serious (it was), we ordered one despite having already eaten an entire meal. It's a Honey Bastard, after all.

A bit later, a rather large pizza dog made its way to the table. The sausage/meat/weiner here is at least half a pound of meat. We asked Jerrier for the source (twice); he was mum (twice). If we had to bet on butchers, we'd go with Rudolph's or Jimmy's. But those are just wild guesses. (Are they, though?)
The Honey Bastard Hot Dog ($15) is served on a pizza plate and the base is an oblong pizza crust. The frank has an assertive smoke essence, dancing with those charred bits of crust resulting in a quite complex bite. This is about as close to a hot dog as a Twinkie is to a pastry. This is a food category unto itself that shouldn't be taken lightly. Don't eat it after you have already eaten a whole meal unless it's your duty to journalism.

The bacon marmalade is slathered like relish on top. The hot soppressata was kind of difficult to discern from the bacon marmalade, and we're not sure about the habanero honey — perhaps it was all blended with the marmalade. Quibbling over that feels brutish, and we're a lot of things, but quibblers? No. This was already a weighty meal.

Two of us shared part of the delicacy, then took half of it home.

Jerrier says the dog will be added to the next round of menus, but you can order it any time.