All hail the corn dog at The Original Pronto Pup, Oregon’s shrine to fried food on a stick (2024)

If an alien landed at Rockaway Beach and wandered into town, it might very well think that at least a few of the locals worshipped a peculiar kind of deity: an oblong, deep-fried hot dog on a stick.

That’s because one of the town’s most popular attractions, The Original Pronto Pup, looks, smells and feels like something of a Church of the Corn Dog.

The small white building on the side of U.S. 101 is topped with a giant fiberglass corn dog. Inside, where the menu features nine kinds of corn dogs, the owners will tell you about how the Pronto Pup was the original corn dog, about how the now-classic American fair food was invented in Rockaway Beach back in 1941.

Outside the door is a mechanical corn dog ride. Yes, it works. Yes, it is free to ride. You can’t make this stuff up.

While the Original Pronto Pup can feel like an age-old beach attraction, the restaurant only dates back to 2016. Original owner Anthony McNamer said he opened the place to celebrate Rockaway Beach as the birthplace of the corn dog, to “make a bigger deal” of the claim to fame. His original concept of a corn-dog-shaped restaurant morphed into a retro 1950s-era restaurant with a 30-foot corn dog on top.

The menu features not only the original Pronto Pup ($4) but a host of variations, including the footlong Super Pup ($8), the vegetarian Veggie Pup ($4), the Pickle Pup ($3), and the Cheesy Pup ($3). The restaurant has a few tables inside, with more extensive seating outside.

Current owner Diane Langer, who purchased the restaurant from McNamer in 2021, is not as zealous a devotee, though she still liked it all well enough to drastically alter the course of her life.

In 2021, Langer was working as an auto importer in Tacoma, Washington, where she still lives with her boyfriend, the two making the roughly four-hour commute to Rockaway Beach to run the restaurant every weekend. She had worked at McDonald’s earlier in her life, she said, but otherwise had no experience running a restaurant – let alone a shrine to fried food on a stick.

“We didn’t really think too much into it,” Langer said. “I didn’t realize there was quite the following for Pronto Pups that there is.”

She soon found out.

There are the regular worshippers, locals who eat corn dogs as an everyday way of life, who Langer said are a first-name basis at the restaurant. Then there are the pilgrims, people for whom The Original Pronto Pup has become tradition, an integral part of their Oregon coast vacation experience. There are also plenty of new adherents, Langer said, people drawn in by the giant corn dog statue, perhaps, and whose eyes are then opened to the fried food revelation that is a Pronto Pup.

“People, they just love the whole concept,” she said.

Of course, there are also doubters – those who don’t buy the corn dog conception story that Pronto Pup is selling. Corn dog vendors in California, Texas, Minnesota and Illinois all claim to have invented the deep-fried hot dog on a stick, casting Pronto Pup’s legacy into doubt.

Langer shrugged off the controversy. She’s not here to argue fried food history with anybody, she said. In Rockaway Beach, the only beef is in the corn dogs themselves (save the vegetarian options).

“I don’t think I’ve ever really looked into the other claims,” she said. “I just know it’s the same batter that was used back then.”

That batter is itself a source of controversy. Some corn dog purists have claimed the combination of cornmeal and pancake batter makes a Pronto Pup not a corn dog at all, but a Pronto Pup – its own thing. And while that line of reasoning is a bit of a slippery slope to food purity tests – what is “pizza”? what is a “taco”? – it has a surprising proponent: The Original Pronto Pup.

The restaurant claims that its batter makes Pronto Pups “one-of-a-kind,” more savory than corn dogs, which “lean sweeter.” The general rule of thumb is that “every Pronto Pup is a corn dog, but not every corn dog is a Pronto Pup,” according to the restaurant.

Brushing aside the drama once again, Langer said she’s just enjoying running the place, having fun with the food, the following, the giant corn dog statue on the roof. Every winter, she’s been dressing up the statue with a pair of antlers and a nose. She’s currently mulling over introducing a breakfast corn dog, sold with coffee, she said. She’s also working on getting a home in Rockaway Beach so she can more fully dedicate her life to this strange calling.

“It’s pretty interesting,” Langer said of the strange shift in her life, from selling cars to hawking corn dogs. “It definitely worked out.”

The Original Pronto Pup is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday and Friday, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; 602 U.S. 101, Rockaway Beach; 971-306-1616; rockawayprontopup.com.

--Jamie Hale covers travel and the outdoors and co-hosts the Peak Northwest podcast. Reach him at 503-294-4077, jhale@oregonian.com or @HaleJamesB.

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