If you only eat one hot dog named in honor of a personal injury attorney that’s served by a steampunk-themed gourmet hot dog joint this year, it ought to be the Gordon McKernan ($7.99, hopefully soon to be re-priced to $8.88) from The Missing Link in downtown Shreveport. This new restaurant opened quietly in July at 504 Texas Street after several years in business as a popular food truck.
While operating as a food truck, The Missing Link was known for delicious rosemary and garlic fries – which contain about a bulb’s worth of diced garlic, enough to keep your loved ones at arm’s length for several days – but something tells me that the lawyer-themed hot dog will be their new calling card.
I asked Brady Crenshaw, general manager, how the hot dog got its name.
“We didn’t have a name for that particular dog yet, and we really needed one, and Gordon McKernan was just about the most random thing we could think to name it,” Crenshaw said with a smile. Though he didn’t get too specific, he added that McKernan knows about the hot dog and – and things got very vague here – will hopefully be visiting the restaurant to eat his eponymous hot dog at some point in the future. What a time to be alive.
One thing about Gordon McKernan, the hot dog: It is tasty. The sausage itself is linguisa, a Portuguese-style sausage made with garlic and paprika, and it’s topped with onion, tomato, cilantro and avocado poblano dressing. If all of those delicious toppings intimidate you, the restaurant offers a variety of hot dog, sandwich, and salad options.
The place is also beautiful. I’m not sure who the incredibly talented light fixture and furniture builder is in this group of young entrepreneurs (Crenshaw shares responsibility for The Missing Link with his business partner, Cade Horn), but holy cow. What looks to be about 100 ornate light fixtures hang from ever nook and cranny. The bar (oddly, by the way, the bar is the only well-lit space in the restaurant, which is sort of the opposite of what you’d expect) is gorgeous. Everywhere you look, everything appears to be custom-made, from the tables themselves to the fans that cool the dining room. It’s a really beautiful dining room, but too dark for an amateur like myself to photograph. You’ll just have to go see it for yourself.
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If you enjoy this kind of writing about local food in Shreveport-Bossier, download Eat Here: A Food Lover’s Guide to Shreveport-Bossier.
