I began my odyssey by arriving sharply at 9 a.m. at the state’s most legendary hot-dog parlor, the original home of the “ripper.” Founded in 1928 by Royal Rutt and his wife, Anna, on the south side of Clifton, only a 20-minute drive from Manhattan, Rutt’s Hut (417 River Road, 973-779-8615) is a huge brown pile that sits in a grove of trees proximate to two major highways but visible from neither. Let’s just say the place is hard to find.

It consists of a darkened barroom and a 1950s-style fast-food counter where you eat standing up. Like many of the places I was to visit, Rutt’s Hut deep-fries its hefty beef-pork links until a rip appears in the side; hence, the nickname.

Despite the early hour, I stepped up and ordered one well done. It was soon handed across the counter: a bulbous, artificial-skin dog of the type often called a “ballpark frank,” sporting a giant gash that might alarm an emergency-room physician. Among several ways the ripper may be dressed, foremost is Rutts’s signature relish, said to have been invented by the founder’s mother back in Germany: a canary-yellow condiment that tastes as if it contains mustard, onions and sweet-pickle relish. While it seemed a little strange eating a hot dog for breakfast, the fellow behind me polished off four in under five minutes.

Near the northern end of Clifton, several working-class neighborhoods away, is the Hot Grill (669 Lexington Avenue, 973-772-6000), a name that suggests more raciness than the elderly male staff, in starched white outfits, can deliver. Hot Grill is a prime advocate of another genre of regional frank known as the Texas wiener. Indeed, its logo shows a lanky hot dog wearing a cowboy hat and chaps.