The North Carolina Diner That Refuses To Put Ketchup On Hot Dogs

The Raleigh-Durham area might be the most underrated food city on the East Coast, according to Andrew Zimmern, and along with all the new restaurants cropping up there, there are plenty of established eateries loaded with both history and good eats. The Roast Grill is one of the latter, and it has been slinging hot dogs out of its divey Raleigh digs since 1940. But not just any hot dogs: The Roast Grill strictly adheres to a no-ketchup policy, a rule that stretches back to the original owners (the current owner's grandparents), George and Mary Charles Poniros.

The diner's menu is minimal: just hot dogs cooked up on the original grill, beverages, and a few Greek desserts, including homemade baklava and pound cake. You can get your hot dog topped with chili that Mary Charles spent multiple days perfecting — its recipe is more than a century old — a bit of yellow mustard, onions, or coleslaw (slaw on hot dogs being something of a regional preference that you might never have heard of if you're not from the South). As if to emphasize the diner's anti-ketchup stance, there is even a shirt on a shelf featuring the Heinz logo with a prohibition symbol overlaid on it.

Ketchup isn't the only thing that isn't available at The Roast Grill. When the menu says that the only toppings available are mustard, creamy coleslaw, chili, and onions, it means it. There are also no sides that come with your hot dogs, so don't go looking for nachos, popcorn, or fries (the other typical ballpark offerings that are normally ordered alongside wieners). The Roast Grill also doesn't have any printed menus; the menu is on the wall in letterboard form, and that's all she wrote.

Another thing The Roast Grill doesn't believe in is dinner hours, apparently. The diner is open Tuesday through Friday from 11:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m., and on Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m.; it's closed on Sundays and Mondays. So if you want to try some of its famously charred hot dogs, you'll have to make time during your lunch break or brave the crowds on a Saturday. Finally, the hole-in-the-wall eatery also doesn't accept credit cards or any digital payments. Cash was good enough when it opened, and it remains the sole form of payment today. Though prices have been forced upward, you can still get yourself a remarkably cheap, historic meal there.