If you get tired of hot turkey this weekend, try a hot dog — from E & L’s Gourmet Hot Dogs cart.
Loren Love is the owner. “Of course, everybody always calls me ‘Hot Dog Man,’” he says.
Love sells a variety of hot dogs, but his 901 Dog is Memphis-centric. “It’s got coleslaw, onions, barbecue sauce, and jalapeño peppers.”
He also sells Chicago-style (sweet relish, chopped onions, tomato slices, a dill pickle wedge, and hot peppers on a poppy seed bun with a sprinkle of celery salt), and New York-style (sweet relish, sauerkraut, spicy brown mustard, and onion with a dill pickle wedge).
Love also sells specialty dogs, including the slaw dog, chili cheese dog, and build-your-own.
And he sells smoked sausage: Polish sausage, and one he’s quite familiar with — andouille. “I’m originally from the Delta coast town Pass Christian.”
Both his grandmothers were great cooks, Love says. “They kept me in the kitchen with them as I was coming up. And it just kind of stuck with me, so I have a passion for the culinary arts.” He also helped his mother, who ran the cafeteria for the Job Corps in Gulfport, Mississippi.
“I’m a big foodie. I love eating. So, of course, I have to know how to cook.”
He was more interested in flight school than cooking as a teenager, so he enlisted in the Navy after high school. “Found out I was color blind,” he says, “so that crushed that little dream.”
Love, who got feedback from cooking for friends while he was in the service, eventually enrolled at The Culinard Culinary School in Birmingham.
He got “burned out” on restaurants where he worked after he graduated. “I stepped away from it for a little while and was actually working for body shops in Memphis for the last 10, 12 years.”
Love fell in love with hot dog carts after he saw his friend’s cart in action Downtown. He didn’t want a food truck. “I’m six foot seven, and the last time I weighed myself I was 295 pounds. So the truck and trailer thing I was into would have to be kind of tall ’cause I don’t want to be hunched over 8, 9, 10 hours.”
Love was working at an auto dealership when his hours were cut because of the pandemic. So he decided to get that hot dog cart. “You got a low overhead, but you can make a ton of money off this,” he says.
His custom-built cart, shaped like a little box with two push handles on it, includes four pans for his hot dogs and smoked sausages and two half-pans for his chili and cheese.
He opened for business in September 2020, in the middle of the pandemic. “I was actually making more money than I am making now. Because people weren’t going to sit down in a restaurant.”
Love boils or grills the hot dogs. “You have some people tell you, ‘I don’t want mine boiled.’ Some folks say, ‘Put it on the grill and burn it.’”
He’s branched out to other frankfurters. “I finally had a chicken frank on my cart last week.” But a turkey hot dog? “I still have not tried it,” he says.
The “E” in his business name is his mom, Elvina Love. “She’s the behind-the-scenes person. She just helps me out a lot.”
Future plans? “I was thinking about getting one more cart and one of those bounce houses and water slides. And if you want to throw your kids a birthday party or have a block party, you can call me.”
But he doesn’t want a restaurant. “I think there’s a lot more opportunity to being mobile than being tied down.”
E & L’s Gourmet Hot Dogs cart is at its regular stand between 11 a.m. and 8 or 9 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays at Cordova Pit Stop at 8555 Macon Road. It won’t be open Thanksgiving and the day after, but it will be open that weekend.
And, to celebrate the holiday, Love will have turkey. “I actually will carry a turkey frank.”