What can be more New York than strolling the Coney Island board walk on a sunny summer day while eating a Nathan’s hot dog?
It was Murray Handwerker, son of the frankfurter giant’s founder and namesake, who turned Nathan’s from a local landmark into a nationally recognized symbol of hot dogs at their best.
Handwerker, who died last weekend at 89, was born in Brooklyn and literally grew up in the hot dog stand his parents opened (based on his mother’s secret recipe) in 1916, with money borrowed from future star entertainers Eddie Cantor and Jimmy Durante.
Despite his father’s skepticism, Murray Handwerker expanded the menu, and opened dozens of restaurants and franchises and marketed the brand to supermarket chains around the country.
But he always remained true to the hot dog — “the mainstay” of Nathan’s, which he sold in 1987. (His personal favorite? A plain dog on a hot bun.)
Murray Handwerker was another piece of old New York that’s now sadly gone.
Nathan’s, happily, lives on.