In Springfield, Illinois, along a piece of old Route 66, the Cozy Dog Drive-in offers a mix of Route 66 nostalgia, very tasty corn dogs and a controversial version of corn dog history.
While some of its signs announce that their product is “better than corn dogs,” the folks behind the counter are ready to tell you that this is where the corn dog was born. It won’t take you much of a Google search to see how much disagreement there is with that, including 1920s patents.
The version Cozy Dog has pitched to local media is that founder Ed Wildmire, Jr. found a version in Texas in the early 1940s; it was a sausage baked in corn bread. According to this version, Wildmire and a friend whose father was a baker came up with the idea of coating the sausage with batter and adding a stick.
But tell the story any way you’d like, Gumbo is prepared to say that this is one of the tastiest corn dogs, and in the end, isn’t that the point?
