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In her 30-some years as food critic for the Grand Forks, N.D., Herald, Marilyn Hagerty has reviewed the Dippin’ Dots at a hockey rink, sung the praises of grilled salmon with North Dakota Prairie Sauce, and made her way through countless portions of lutefisk. But she has never reviewed a hot dog.

Ms. Hagerty has also been to New York half a dozen times in her 85 years, and eaten any number of restaurant meals. But she had never tried a New York City dirty-water dog.

And so it seemed like a natural to ask Ms. Hagerty — whose modestly gushing review of the new Olive Garden in Grand Forks (“The chicken Alfredo ($10.95) was warm and comforting on a cold day”) has become an instant Internet sensation — to sample the echt New York street food on her whirlwind publicity and dining tour of the city that is to include meals at Dovetail and Le Bernardin.

By the time she got to Midtown on Tuesday afternoon, accompanied, in the modern style, by a multimedia developer from her newspaper who has been chronicling her adventures via Twitter and blog, Ms. Hagerty was ready for a real meal. She had had a biscotti for breakfast on the first leg of her flight to Minneapolis, another on the way to New York. “Then I went to my room and had some Kraft cheese” – cheddar – “and a piece of stale bread, brown bread, that I had in my bag.”

As luck would have it, there is a hot dog cart in front of The New York Times building on 40th Street. Ms. Hagerty approached the vendor, Abdelalim Abdelbaky. Her first question caught him off guard.

“What do you recommend for a hot dog?”

“Two hot dogs,” came the reply.

Ms. Hagerty held her ground. “I’ll have one hot dog.”

James Estrin/The New York Times

Then began the age-old negotiation.

“You want mustard ketchup?”

“No ketchup, just mustard.”

“Onions?”

“Yes, please, nice little tiny fresh ones.”

Mr. Abdelbaky spooned out a run of onions simmered in sweet tomato sauce.

“Oh, he gave me these soggy ones. But I know I’ll like it.”

She took a bite and pronounced her verdict.

“I think the hot dog could be a little hotter,” she said. “But I like this combination of mustard and onions.”

Mr. Abdelbaky, aware that some sort of media event was going on, held up a tongful of sauerkraut.

“Sauerkraut!” Ms. Hagerty said. “I never thought of that. That’ll make it even better. We could have a picnic.”

Ms. Hagerty gave the eatery, which was plastered in glossy pictures of meat-bread combinations and crowned with a red-and-yellow umbrella, high marks for décor.

James Estrin/The New York Times

“It’s colorful,” she said. “It makes me want to have a hot dog.”

She was flummoxed, though, by a bilingual sign on the cart in Arabic and English that said “Halal food.”

“I don’t know what that is,” she said.

The concept was explained.

“I’m Lutheran,” she said, “so that wouldn’t apply to me.”

Ms. Hagerty promised to revisit Mr. Abdelbaky’s cart on her next trip to New York. And she said she was looking forward to dinner at the Times Square location of the Olive Garden on Thursday.

“It will be, shall I say, interesting to see if it’s any different,” she said. “It’s pleasant to dine at the Olive Garden.”