The hot dog statue wore tennis shoes and held a Ukrainian flag in its left hand and an American flag in its right. (The hot dog had hands.)
Standing outside the flagship store of the Ukrainian gas station chain Socar, the statue displayed a sign advertising “Nathan’s Famous” hot dogs in the same green curlicue script that promotes the chain at its original location in Brooklyn’s Coney Island and Nathan’s outlets everywhere.
On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Ivan Pozniak, a 35-year-old airline pilot, walked past the statue and into the store connected to the gas station. He was about to try his first Nathan’s Famous hot dog.
“Overall, it’s delicious,” Mr. Pozniak said after his first bite of the so-called New York hot dog, with mustard, ketchup and sweet pickle relish. “I usually prefer more classic sauces like Tabasco or the standard ketchup and mayonnaise — that’s what I’m used to. This pickle relish surprised me, but in a good way.”
Hot dogs are ubiquitous in Ukraine. But for a long time the market has been dominated by a kind of hot dog encased in a tubular panini and described, for a reason no French person seems to know, as the “French” dog. The story of how Nathan’s dogs — settled in their open, messy buns — found a foothold in the country is in many ways a reflection of how much Ukraine has tilted toward the West in past decades.
There are now 27 Nathan’s Famous outlets in Socar gas stations in Ukraine. Despite the war, as much as possible, the lights have stayed on. Business is not booming, but it is OK.
More than almost anyone, Oleksiy Dronov, 48, is responsible for bringing Nathan’s to Ukraine.
The owners of Socar wanted a special kind of hot dog in their stores, which are a far cry from the typical American gas station establishment. (The flagship Socar carries Veuve Clicquot Champagne, aged filet mignon and caviar-flavored potato chips.) Most important, the dog had to be all beef, to meet the Muslim dietary requirements of the corporate headquarters in Azerbaijan.
Mr. Dronov, who worked on the project for Socar, looked at hot-dog chains in Denmark and Germany. One of Mr. Dronov’s bosses had been to New York and tasted Nathan’s Famous, which was founded by a Polish immigrant to New York and his wife in 1916.
“He was under the legend already,” Mr. Dronov explained.
In 2019, Mr. Dronov sent three emails to a generic Nathan’s address on the company website, but the company wasn’t interested.
Then, he sent another email with a picture of a new billboard near his house advertising hot dogs at KFC. He asked Nathan’s: If KFC was entering the market, why aren’t you?
Eventually, Mr. Dronov made contact with Oliver Powers, the vice president of franchise operations at Nathan’s, and Socar signed a deal. Nathan’s also made big plans for Ukraine: franchises and eventually free-standing Nathan’s restaurants.
But the timing was not great. Socar opened its first Nathan’s Famous outlet during the pandemic, a time of masks and hyper-sanitariness, things that are terrible for hot dog sales.
Then, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Mr. Powers was in Florida. He sent a text to Mr. Dronov.: “I hope you are OK.”
Mr. Dronov’s reply: “I’m in Kyiv, they’re shooting on the outskirts of the city, some small groups are invading and being stopped.” He added, “I wish I had a gun,” and appended the Ukrainian version of a smiley-face emoji.
Mr. Powers told him to stay safe. They continued to trade messages throughout the toughest part of the war in Kyiv. On Feb. 28, Mr. Powers wrote: “Are you OK, are you hanging in?”
“Yep, boss,” Mr. Dronov said. “But since today, we can’t really sell Nathan’s.”
Many Socar stations were closed, emptied of gas. Imported products like hot-dog buns were running low. In those early days of the war, Mr. Dronov started volunteering, delivering food to older people. On March 4, the same day that Russian forces took over Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant, Mr. Dronov messaged Mr. Powers.
“Hi, Boss. I have a question,” he wrote. “Our importer can’t make logistics. Can we put on some plastic covers on the Nathan’s light boxes and temporary switch back to local sausages available? In order to feed the people?”
Mr. Powers, normally more of a stickler for Nathan’s Famous rules, replied: “Sure. Glad to see you are OK.”
Mr. Powers is still friends with Mr. Dronov and other Ukrainians who helped Nathan’s come to Ukraine. In an interview, he reflected on his experience. “Everybody says to me, how do you have these relationships internationally with all these people? And you just sell hot dogs?” he said.
But he added: “When you work together, the one thing I’ve learned, we all have the same problems. We deal with the same issues.”
He paused for a second, musing on the war. “I hope it ends soon,” he said.
Eventually, Nathan’s resumed selling hot dogs, the war became a fact of life and Mr. Dronov become a volunteer for the war effort.
From a visiting American team, he learned how to perform tactical medicine on the battlefield, and then he learned to teach tactical medicine to Ukrainians. These days, he spends much of his time doing that.
As for Nathan’s in Ukraine, gone are the dreams of holding a hot-dog eating contest at the flagship store every Fourth of July like the one in Coney Island, which in 2021 featured a man who ate 76 Nathan’s Famous hot dogs in 10 minutes. In Ukraine, the government has discouraged big gatherings like that.
In 2023, Nathan’s in Ukraine tried to celebrate the Fourth with an online hot-dog eating contest. Only about 30 people entered, though, and the winner ate just five hot dogs in three minutes. For that celebration, the store ordered the hot-dog statue, along with a large American flag. Someone put the small Ukrainian and U.S. flags in the hot dog’s hands.
The statue and the flags have endured, unlike the online hot-dog eating contest.
At the flagship, most of the workers are women as the men are away at the front. Ukrainian soldiers sometimes sit at the tables, eating Nathan’s hot dogs while in uniform.
Zana Kobelska, 37, who is married to Mr. Pozniak, stops at the flagship whenever she can find an excuse. Before the war, working as a flight attendant, Ms. Kobelska said, she had visited the United States maybe 50 times. She said she had liked America all her life.
“But right now, because of the politics of Trump, it’s not good, as it’s not a democratic way,” she said.
Ms. Kobelska burst into tears and apologized. “I still think that America is the best partner for Ukraine,” she said.
But she said she felt a twinge when she walked past the Nathan’s hot dog statue. She wanted to remove the American flag the statue was holding — not to throw it away or do anything bad with it, but just to put it somewhere else. She worried that maybe it did not belong alongside the Ukrainian flag anymore.
Oleksandra Mykolyshyn contributed reporting.
Kim Barker is a Times reporter writing in-depth stories about the war in Ukraine.
The post In the Midst of War, a Tale of Hot Dogs appeared first on New York Times.
