There are few things that scream “America” like eating a hot dog at a baseball game, the beach, or a backyard cookout.

And while the origins of the hot dog have been much-debated (looking at you, Chicago) — historians say the best claim for its invention is right here in New York City, in Coney Island.

That’s where a young German immigrant named Charles Feltman in 1867 took a Frankfurter sausage and stuck it on an elongated bun he’d baked himself.

“He was very inventive,” said Michael Quinn, a Brooklyn native and Coney Island history buff. “[Feltman] nearly starved the first year here in New York.  He just kept moving forward and finding ways to survive.”

Feltman sold his first hot dogs from a roving cart and eventually built a massive pavilion that could serve thousands of people at a time. But the restaurant fell into disrepair and the family sold off the property in the 1940s.

Quinn stumbled across Feltman’s story and decided to revive the brand with his brother in 2015. Feltman’s original recipe hot dogs (or something very close to them) are now available in local grocery stores and restaurants across the city.

“It was just a way just to bring back something that was lost to time and lost to history,” Quinn said.

Quinn has also written a one-man show about Feltman’s life, which he’s performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and at Manhattan’s 36th Street Theatre.

Gothamist sat down with Michael Quinn to hear the tale of Feltman and his hot dog — and to chow down on a couple of Feltman’s franks, loaded with sauerkraut and spicy brown mustard.

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

MICHAEL QUINN: Charles Feltman came to New York as a teenager from Frankfurt, Germany, in the 1850s. He worked all sorts of jobs to survive. He worked with coal in East New York. He worked as a baker. He got a pie wagon and tried selling small pies to beach-goers on Coney Island.

Feltman looked out at  Coney Island, where crowds were coming, and thought, "You know, what's an easy way that I could serve them lunch? A Frankfurter sausage in a bun."  They could walk the beach with it, feed a baby, go on rides. It was just a portable lunch that had everything you need, right? Bread, toppings, onions, mustard. Because he was a baker, he knew how to make everything and put it all together. His most popular item was his breakfast buns, so he decided to elongate the breakfast bun to fit the sausage.

Feltman knew a fellow named Donovan, an Irish immigrant in East New York, who converted his original pie cart into the world’s first hot dog cart. The umbrella, the coal, the heat. The drawer to keep the buns fresh.

Feltman would walk up and down the beach selling what he called “Coney Island Red Hots.” From what I can tell, they were an immediate hit.

But he ran into some trouble. There was a man named John Y. McKane, who was Constable of Coney Island. He was part of the Tammany Hall crew. He owned a construction company that built most of Coney Island, and anything that went on there had to go through him. There was a rumor going around that Feltman’s sausages were made out of dog meat. So McKane banned them.

Feltman took matters into his own hands. He approached McKane and said, "Here, I'm going to be open with you and transparent. These are what they're made out of:  very simple ingredients, garlic and some other spices smoked in a lamb casing." Feltman showed him the process, and McKane took a bite of the frankfurter. After that, he was able to sell them again. Now, the fact that people thought they were made of dog meat — that's how the slang term "hot dog" came to be.

From there he kept growing. Feltman got in touch with a guy named Andrew Culver, a railroad tycoon, and he convinced Culver to build an express line from Green-Wood Cemetery to Coney Island. And the press really came down on Charles Feltman. They said he’s a fool. Who’s going to want to spend the weekend at Coney Island? But persistence won out and the Culver Line was built. Today it’s called the F Train.

More people started coming to Coney Island. This was before air conditioning. People were sleeping outside in their tenement windows. Coney Island was a place to cool off, to bring the family, to enjoy the beach and enjoy entertainment and enjoy a good meal and a drink.

Feltman built a resort — a series of beer gardens. He had two stages. He had singing waiters. He traveled back to Germany and brought the first yodelers to the United States. He had a rollercoaster called The Ziz that went from Surf Avenue, through the maple trees, through the beer garden and down to the beach. At the time Feltman’s was the largest restaurant in the world. President William Howard Taft was a regular — he was from Cincinnati and no stranger to German restaurants. Rumor is he actually skipped out on a hundred-dollar tab one night.

Feltman’s had a Polish-American employee named Nathan Handwerker. In 1916, Nathan left and started Nathan’s Famous. He was able to undercut Feltman because he used a different, cheaper version of Feltman's invention and mass-produced it.  Feltman's hot dogs were 10 cents — Nathan did the nickel hot dog.

Times were changing.  Coney Island had changed. People weren't going there anymore for their honeymoon, their vacation. They were going there just on a Sunday.  So for Nathan to have this little stand down the block to sell half-price hot dogs during a time where, you know, the economy had changed – it became a hit.

So Feltman’s declined and faded. But the invention of Charles Feltman lived on.