What's a coney dog, and why do Windsorites love them? These pros say it's in our history

It's a messy concoction of chili-like sauce, bright yellow mustard and finely diced white onion. It's best eaten with a napkin or five, and it'll probably end up spilled down your shirt. 

It's a coney dog, a beloved fixture of Detroit — and Windsor — cuisine. 

But its history and enduring popularity is a little hazy, even as two coney dog shops opened within a block of each other in Windsor this year.

"I got interested when I was about eight," said Dave Liske, author of The Flint Coney: A Savoury History.  

"In 1970, Genesee Valley Mall opened in Flint. I grew up just south of Flint and Palace Coney Island opened there when the mall opened. 

"I had my first Flint coney there and I was hooked."

Liske's love of the coney dog is long and well-established. His book documents the history of a specific variety of coney dog native to Flint, Mich., and he even operated a coney stand in Luna Pier, Mich.

He describes his love for the coney dog as an obsession, one that his family indulges and even encouraged when he wrote his book. 

"I found places that existed long before American and Lafayette," he said. "Places that have been forgotten in time."

According to Liske, coney dogs came about with the immigration of people from Europe, the Balkans and Greece to Michigan. The spices in the coney are similar to what immigrants would have eaten back home, he says, and the first shop was founded in 1907.

Contrary to the name, coney dogs aren't a New York food. More likely, according to the Detroit Historical Society, is that people coming to Michigan passed through the famed New York entertainment district and took the name for their own food venture. 

In both Flint and Detroit, Liske traces the coney dog's rise in popularity to autoworkers.

"When Buick opened in 1907 in Flint they needed something handy to eat. They were working 24/7 and all the trains were passing through Flint and this [coney] place opened up right downtown and it became a haven for the autoworkers," he said. 

"They fed the autoworkers. These places sprouted up where the plants were built."