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Guest:
David Arbetter of Arbetter’s Hot Dogs
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https://www.instagram.com/arbetterhotdogs/?hl=en
#food #restaurant #miami #hotdogs
We are talking food here on the beach Channel I’m Randy ctz and we are in the company today of hot dog royalty as we’re with David AR better the name AR better and hot dogs are synonymous and first tell me the quick history of our betters because I’ve been going there
Since I’m a little kid and I’m an old man now but uh our betters is legendary here in South Florida well I’m four years older than you Randy so but uh now our BS uh we opened in 58 really I I put down 59 just because I like to be
Fanatical about I hate when people over over exaggerate how long they’ve been in a in in a place but we open really 58 uh on Flagler in Miami old Miami like around 15th Street 14th Street somewhere down there and then a few years after
That we moved to uh 8 Street and uh 58th I it was like 5840 a street and uh we were there until 1971 and then we moved to uh we moved to where we are now on Bird Road and uh my my dad had a handshake agreement with
The uh with the guy who owned the complex on on a street and he saw how busy we were and he got jealous this guy Ernie and he he kicked us out and he opened up Ernie’s hot dogs which went out of business a few months later and
Then we we ended up on bird in a really a better spot for us so Bird Road really I believe was one of the culinary Mecca I mean South Florida Today is a Foodies Paradise but some of the best restaurants some of the Miami Staples this is going back when the Orange Bowl
Was still around right started right there on Bird Road I mean I grew up in the general vicinity and I remember going to AR betters as a kid uh I still take my kids there today they love it thank you though I don’t live in the
Area anymore I mean there was the old China made restaurant there was Frankie Pizza Lia Steakhouse there those were legendary iconic restaurants well and specifically lyla’s so lyla’s was over in what was originally really what we called Westchester Westchester wasn’t Westchester Westchester was only a shopping center on Coral Way you know in
87th and that was Westchester and that’s where lla was and then lla the owner of lyas is this guy Pepe and he moved over to Bird Road and open up uh Rio chto which was famous because just like lla they had that giant uh uh Palamino steak
I think it was Palamino steak with the fries the Papas covering it like like a foot over it and uh we used to go there and talk with the owner Pepe from Cuba nicest guy ever and that place was mobbed and they had the best fla to this
Day except my buddy Burger be says his mom makes probably the only better fla that I’ve ever had than uh than uh at Rio cristelle but it’s still there today the daughter I think the granddaughter owns it and uh they do okay not as good
As they did back then but uh you know but that’s one of the places China made you mentioned uh China made was on bird and my family you have to remember in the 60s not a lot of people ate out most people ate in every single meal but my
Family because we were always in the restaurant business we would travel all around Dade Monroe uh Broward counties and go to all these I’ve been to so many restaurants that a lot of people had never even heard of and and China made was probably the best Chinese food in of
Dade and Broward at that time and there was just ly and lines of people out the door and I don’t think there’s as good Chinese now as there was back then you know just example I mean there’s tropical Chinese still on Bird Road which comes around I mean people talk
About that being one of the best in town but you’re right those are that was a different era of restaurants and that was a different area at the time as well that was a that was a very it’s more Hispanic today that general area but it
Was it was a little Hispanic back then it was always becoming more and more Hispanic you know because I grew up basically the the Nexus of my universe is 87th Avenue Galloway yep uh and then uh you know a guy is Old Tom Miami when he says Galloway 87th Avenue in bird and
87th Avenue in Miller and coral and 87th Avenue and Coral Way that is really the Nexus of My Universe I’m a Blue Lakes Glades Southwest guy yeah absolutely you’re old Miami old Miami there was also a pizza place right right right in that same area uh where I remember when
You picked up a pizza they would throw a slice on top of the box I’ve never seen that done again I’ve been eating there since I was zero years old basically you know and it’s called Frankie’s Pizza uh the Pascarella still own it roxan and Renee they’re still very good friends of
Ours and uh you know like roxan used to be like Miss tall world I remember her pictures are still in there yeah yeah and they are the nicest people they do a phenomenal job of running uh Frankies and it’s still pretty much exactly how it was just as
Our betters is you know more or less I I I’ve renovated it but I’ve kept it the same it still looks the same it still looks the same I hadn’t been there in 10 years I brought my son down there maybe six months ago he was like this is the
Coolest place I’ve ever seen dad and we live on Miami Beach he said that yeah and we live on Miami Beach with all these fancy you know high flying places but he he loved our betters um back to our betters right your Dad starts it never in your wildest dreams as a kid
Did you ever imagine 60 years later the place is still going no I can’t imagine as a matter of fact the shirt I’m wearing now on the back of it says 65 years so we’re 65 years strong um no we couldn’t imagine that it would have
Lasted so long uh we’re lucky look if you last five years in the restaurant business you’re you’re the 95 percentile no most places go out of business within five years we lasted we know we’ve been going 65 years it’s I would love to be
Alive or for my son to be alive and have it at a hundred years but you know this is all we do we love it I can’t even really explain how much I love what I do no you can you can hear it in your voice
You can see it in your eyes let me ask you how often when you’re there do you get somebody coming in and says you know my grandfather used to come here I mean that’s got to be I guess it’s good news bad news the good news is the Legacy
Continues the bad news is you feel old well yeah you know I feeling old to me doesn’t bother me it’s just like you know as long as I’m in the restaurant and I’m talking with people I I I I don’t care yeah yes I’m getting older
But that is the greatest thing ever when you sit there and talk to people and they say or or the granddaughter comes in and says my my grandfather took me here or my dad took me here or you know son or daughter that’s the coolest thing
Ever then you see them with their CH children like one or two years old I always walk up to them I good job starting them young my my son and daughters are third generation Our betters customers so that’s what I’m talking about it really is it’s pretty
Cool when you bring them down there and and they love hot dogs and then they get the french fries and it’s it’s it’s really it’s really unique it’s it’s it’s Miami is not that old of a city right so to talk about a restaurant being 65 years old it’s really incredible well a
Pretty cool story my you know we’ve been in my family’s been in Miami since the 30s which is pretty good you know for quite a while uh our next door neighbor a place called um I think it’s called Highland Park it’s right across from uh Miami jackon were you know downtown Y
And that’s where my mom grew up and our next door neighbor then was Pasco Angelica in in the 30s okay and his son John Angelica started working at ARB betters in 1972 50 years ago is and he’s still there today working that’s amazing and he runs it basically that’s really
That’s an amazing story a lot of Miami history all right let’s talk hot dogs I’m looking at the the chili dog right there that’s your signature recipe or your family signature recipe um I know my dad’s favorite when he was around used always get the the hot dog with the
Sauerkraut and the mustard on it what’s that one called that’s the mustard Kraut which I’ll show you you know there’s a picture coming up of that but talk about the chili dog and this recipe because you guys are known for that dog yeah well first of all the chili recipe my
Mom was born in Italy and you know for a short time she was in it but our family in Italy and I’ve been there to our little town Del Toronto it goes back like a thousand years that we’ve been there she got that recipe from the old
Gravy they called it which is sunde tomato sauce on spaghetti and she sort of took that tomato sauce recipe and invented the chili recipe back in the 50s even before we started our better she was making that chili and when we first started on a Flagler this is an
Incredible story but is 100% true we lived on Westwood Lake which is very far west which is you know like 109th Avenue is what we lived on and she would take the Chile get on a bus with my brother in the 50s and on on an actual bus you
Know where you have to pay the quarter and and take the chili down to my dad cuz he had no real cooking facilities back then and she would bring the chili in he could heat it up but he couldn’t really you know it was a very small
Place and that is unheard of today probably illegal you know but that’s illegal back then yeah but you know back then you could get away with stuff like that and that’s how they started that small and that humble amazing amazing they talked about the what’s your
Your most popular hot dog right now well chili dog and we make it we make it uh I like that that dog right there I love the col dog now that dog okay that’s a saet hot dog we have the original hot dog we have at arbs is a boiled you know
Meat pork and beef hot dog okay without any casing it’s sort of a soft hot dog it’s a little more bland but it’s meant to go with the chili and our soft steamed bun really the key is the steamed bun the hot dog which is you
Know the original hot dog was more of a bland dog and then uh the chili on top with onions a lot of times and again the chili is made homemade every single day best ingredients we’ve never changed the recipe we never would once in a while
You get someone who says but you know it wasn’t it’s not exactly the same as it was in the early 60 I said look I I’m fanatical about not changing one single thing on the food now we’ve added I think one of the best dogs in the world
The saet all beef that’s the sabret that they have at Grace papay in New York City the exact same dog it’s a real saet and we put the logo right on our BS and we’ve had that now eight years also with our original dog but I’ll never change
You have two types of dogs we actually have like four or five different types of dogs we have our original boil dog which we’ve never changed exact same dog we’ve always had and then we have the saet uh Natural Casing okay which is a 2
O dog and you know it’s an 8:1 dog and just and and just like our our boiled same size and then and then that has a natural casing on it we grill it we put a grill in we grill it we have the Grant Miller dog we call it it’s the jumbo dog
And that dog is a a 4 o dog okay and then we have uh it’s the sad as well and then we have a uh a a monster dog which is uh a foot long 8 oz it’s gigantic and uh and we grill that as well we we’ll
We’ll make it however you want but and then we have a veget believe it or not we have a veggie dog too my dad would turn over and his say all these dogs and choices your dad might be a little uh have steam coming out of his ears not
Just the bun let me ask you so there’s been this trend we’re always about bigger and better and more creative and all these chefs putting a spin on mod on common foods like we had forever yeah there’s a lot of hot dog like like gourmet hot dog places out there how
Have you been able to compete with all those kind of people well okay um I I’ve spent probably in the last five years I’ve spent about $650,000 at ARB betters to redo everything now I always said I want you to come in and not know that I’ve redone
One thing but everything is actually brand new I mean I’m looking at dogs right there so let’s talk about the dogs we’ve added we’ve added dogs but I’ve never changed you know our original dogs but we’ve added a lot of dogs and I had Mike Rosena as a FIU uh uh mathematics
Professor and he told us we we told him exactly the toppings how many dogs we have how many buns we have literally over 1 billion combinations really that’s what God’s hry with one over a billion actually it’s way more than that wow but it’s over a billion I it’s
Sometimes I like saying a million because people wouldn’t even believe there’s a billion combinations but we have 30 toppings now we have you know five different dogs we have four different buns and so when you do the math on that it’s over a billion you know toppings that you could get you you
Mentioned this rather large hot dog the Grant Miller dog yeah that’s for people out there I know you know Grant Miller you go way back but who who is this Grant Miller and how the hell did he get a hot dog okay Grant Miller is probably
He’s one of my best friends he’s one of the best guys you’ll ever meet he’s so Miami he does so much for the community but he owns the Miami Community newspapers and there’s like 12 of them and he’s just an incredible personality and so we like to name dogs after people
From Miami who are real people but you know you know some of them are well known and and he’s one of the guys that we named a dog after and you know he just loves it and people come in and order the Grand Mill and a lot of times
They’ll order the dog I’ll walk right up to them while they’re ordering because I hear them order it and I’ll put him on the phone I go you just ordered a Grant Miller here’s Grant Miller and they’re like what and what dides he say Grant Miller here gr Miller here he goes nuts
And it’s just incredible but it’s an exciting thing and you know it’s funny but you know I have people come up to me almost every day I’m an Arbiters look I want a franchise we want to do we’ve had at one time 10 arbit that was my
Question why why not franchise you have such a name why aren’t why aren’t there 10 R betters in Miami right now I’ll tell you why we’ve had we’ve had 10 at one time before in one in Tampa a few in Bard County one in hiia one in North
Miami and I can just say this much um generally speaking um it just takes a big commitment when you’re running it’s a different business it’s a different business and you really have to know exactly what to do you can do it but most people will try to change
Things and and you cannot change our simple system you can’t and that’s the hardest thing in the world is to be simple our chili recipe is very simple and it’s hard to get the simple it’s almost like genius when you get to simple so I like to run our BS and I
Like to I really love it being the only Arbiters there’s actually one up in Coco still in Coco Florida right now right but you know it it’s and the guy you’re running it’s a great guy but you know we feel like as an AR better we really know
How to run these places and we don’t mess around same fries the best fries in the world same everything I want to get to that two questions regarding that you mentioned the fries right they’re legendary why are they so good what do you do differently that Burger King or
Lila steakhous didn’t do or McDonald’s everyone loves McDonald’s fries what do you do differently what makes those fries okay I’ll tell everyone we we our fries are called Simplot fries okay they’re they’re so expensive that we buy if someone buys fries and they buy a case of fries they’re like 18 bucks our
Fries are $50 per case no one in their right mind would buy our fries we bought the exact same fries that we’ve always bought and they’re the same fries that McDonald’s used with their and McDonald’s fries are incredible okay now we can make a hand cut homemade fries
But they’re not as good believe it or not as our fries because our fries are they only use a big russet Idaho Potato that’s the only kind and they’re they’re super extra long XLF extra long fry and they’re just absolutely the best we use the best grease we use the best quality
And that’s one thing that people will change the first thing someone does if they bought Arbiters is they’re oh I want to get a higher margin so profit so I wna lower the quality you cannot change anything about you know what I Chang is I put new new sliding doors new doors
New ceiling we you know and our place is so clean I put wheels on all our old equipment and the new equipment all wheels so one of our restaurant’s one of the cleanest in the county we had zero infractions once from the health inspection report you know so you have
To it’s an incredible you have to work like a 100 hours a week why not or why haven’t you ever added a burger to the menu out for all these years well please try not to cuss at me again swear at me say the word Burger okay no uh we
Had burgers in the 60s but really my dad he’s from Boston Mass and and and started AR bits from a place up in Boston uh that’s called Joe and Nemos two cousins Joe and Nemo and it was without Burgers it was like steam dogs
And the thing is our bers I I I could add Burgers but it would change our bers I will add any hot dog but I don’t think I will ever add a burger because it changes the complexity of what we do you walk in and you smell Burger I don’t
Want that I want you to walk in and smell hot dogs think hot dogs and I’ll add any hot dog but I won’t add anything else anything crazy before we get to your location which probably is an unnecessary question because everybody knows our betters right but there’s
Probably a couple people that may not have heard of you um I’ll never forget as a kid and I didn’t understand it back then where it says in your restaurant if the Red Sox win the World Series free baked beans like what the hell is this being where
Did that come from and how did you make good on that okay my dad is from Boston Massachusetts he’s actually from a little town north of Boston called sagus and when he was growing up you know in in the early 30s uh my grandfather was a
Doctor and he had some the the means to take him to the Red Sox games they had season tickets back then in the 30s and they would stop as a religion at Jo and Nemo’s hot dog place so my dad uh my grandfather wanted him to be a doctor
And he disappointed him very much and became a hot dog connoisseur but that’s all my dad wanted to do since 1935 since he was 5 years old and you know and so he’s a Boston Red Sox freak he was and and a Celtic freak you know they didn’t
Have the Patriots back then and we didn’t have you know and then coming down to Miami in the 50s there was no Dolphins there was no baseball team pro there was no basketball team pro it wasn’t even a thought okay just University of Miami University of Miami
Which my dad played baseball he played second base on the University of Miami Hurricanes so my dad is a hurricane but so he loved Boston so much from day one he just said if the Red Sox ever win the uh World Series he’s going to give free
Boston baked beans and we’ve done it uh okay we did it in 75 when they didn’t win but remember Carlton fist that okay that year they came so close to winning and that’s the first year we gave beans for the redox but we’ve done it for the Celtics many times because the Celtics
Have won and he was a my dad used to call him the Cel Nicks because he was so little you know but that’s it man we’re we’re original Boston fans but of course I’m a Miami fan first on everything because I’m born a raise on here but truthfully we we we’ve I’ve given
Personally Boston baked beans we did it a few years ago when they won the Red Sox won was your dad still alive when the Red Sox won the wor no no unfortunately he died I think I think it was actual two years before I think he
Died in 2002 and they won it in 2004 all right talk about your location for the one person out there watching that doesn’t know where arbs is and doesn’t recognize the yellow bright yellow building where are you located okay we are on 87th Avenue it’s actually 87th
Court so it’s a block west of 87th Avenue and right Bird Road you can’t miss it some people call it the big yellow bird but we you know we’ve always had that same yellow I put it’s the same sign on top but we you know put a new
You know we you know redid our logo uh you know from that that time but uh it’s actually basically the same exact building you know we’ve just the only thing we’ve done is uh you know we put in new brand new bathrooms we put in brand new counter but the counter is the
Original counter specs I just put a you know a stainless St on the bottom and we had uh uh this famous artist in Miami do the top of it but yeah very nice you know so yeah it’s it’s it’s basically the same exact thing that we’ve always
Had it’s like going back in Miami history isn’t it 100% all right well David I appreciate your time this has been great going down a little Miami history food uh and Etc as we talked about our better hot dogs and we will continue with more I’m Randy ctz and we
Love our food here on the beach Channel h