Bottom Line: The Colorado Green Chili Sausage from Dog Haus brings a nice kick to that chain’s excellent sausage, but it will only be around for a short while.
If you are looking for a good hot dog, hamburger, or even a spicy chicken sandwich (more on the latter here), you can’t go wrong with Dog Haus. That is a fast-casual restaurant that is spreading across the country, and if you have one near you, I recommend stopping by. And if you are looking for something with a kick, they have you covered this month with their Colorado Green Chili menu. That includes a sausage sandwich, fries with green chili queso, and a green chili breakfast burrito.
I paid a visit just recently and sampled the Colorado Green Chili Sausage. Here is the official description of that:
Smoked green chili, jack cheese and pork sausage with Colorado Green Chili sauce, corn tortilla strips, cotija cheese, and scallions; served on grilled King’s Hawaiian rolls.
Note that the special was not advertised anywhere in the store, I only knew about it because I keep a close eye on new spicy items being released (and you can too with our Spicy Food News column). So you will have to ask about availability when you order.
Not only does Dog Haus do good hot dogs, but they also make a pretty darn tasty sausage as well, and this one is kicked up nicely with green chilis. It is quite large (well over a foot in length) and plump as well, and it is plenty juicy inside. In fact, beware of that first bite because the juices will explode as soon as you dig in. The sausage is meaty with a good, rich pork taste and a little bit of a bite from the green chilis.
Then there is that green chili sauce on top which is thick and rich with the taste you expect from the milder chilis it is made from (Colorado’s variation on the New Mexico chili), but it still has some heat. There is also a little bit of earthiness from the sauce and it works very well as a topping for the sausage. The tortilla strips don’t add too much and they tend to fall off as you dig into the sandwich, but the few bites you get offer a nice flavor addition. The cotija cheese is rather sparse, but every once in a while you get a salty pop from it. The split Hawaiian bun adds some sweetness and it is grilled just right to bring everything together quite nicely.
As for the heat, the sausage by itself is below the Mild level on my scale and the green chili sauce is a little bit above Mild, so when everything comes together, I would put this right at Mild overall. A little bit of extra heat would be nice, but not essential because the flavors really work well for this sausage sandwich, and it still leaves your mouth tingling a bit from the chilis. You might ask for jalapeños if you want it hotter, but that may throw off the balance of flavors. If they had fresh serranos, though, that would be a perfect addition.
I also ordered the fries with green chili queso, but that was not what I got. It was basically just fries with the green chili sauce and tortilla strips on top. I don’t know if they were out of the queso or if the order just got messed up, but I wasn’t complaining because the fries with that green chili sauce worked quite well. I could have gobbled down a whole other order of those and I certainly hope that Dog Haus turns the sauce into a regular menu item.
Dog Haus does not provide the nutrition info on its menu items that I am aware of, but I can assure you that this is not diet food. I’m going to guess that the Colorado Green Chili Sausage is at least 800 calories if not more, and those fries likely tacked on another 300 to 400 calories. This is definitely worth the splurge, though, and you can arrange some time in the gym the next day to pay your penance.
Dog Haus currently has locations across the country, with the highest concentration in California and Texas right now. And many of their restaurants are Biergartens as well so they have plenty of brews on tap to pair with their tasty food options. The Colorado Green Chili menu is around for a limited time only, so if there is a location near you (you can check at their website), I recommend stopping by soon to try it out.