As for the culinary side of the Hot Dago, Tschida said: “It’s got to have a good kick, it’s got to be a little spicy—that’s what defines a Dago. We do a half-pound patty between two slices of Vienna, we douse it with our red sauce and we melt mozzarella cheese over it with two pepperoncini.”

Tschida seems to be one of the St. Paulites who’d speak openly about the Hot Dago, which for decades, has pitted those who take offense to the word and the restaurateurs that openly embrace—they’d say reclaim—that word. Every few years, it seems local press revisit the controversy, which if anything, keeps the sandwich in the public eye. In 2007, the director of the St. Paul Human Rights Department even tried to get the name removed through a city ordinance. An attorney for DeGidio’s told the St. Paul Pioneer-Press: “Doesn’t this guy have anything to do?” (A few thousand miles east in New York, an Albany food truck called “Wandering Dago” won a ruling in federal court this past January, allowing them to serve near the state Capitol after Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration had barred them.)

Advertisement
Advertisement

Still, the sandwich remains on at least a half-dozen menus in the area, and on many others with sanitized aliases. If you come to St. Paul and order a Hot Italiano or a Hot Paisano, you’re getting the same dish served with less baggage.

Controversy, of course, can provoke curiosity. Some would call that smart marketing. In 2015, a Chicago restaurant named itself “Chop Chop Chinaman,” which provoked one passerby to scribble an obscenity on the storefront window with lipstick. That person was later charged with a misdemeanor, which set off media attention from across the country.

Advertisement

Tschida of DeGidio’s said the sandwich’s name can be a selling point. “I get people in from Boston and New York and other places,” he said, “and they come in and ask: ‘Can I take a menu home to show my friends?’”