Amelia Eudailey wants to introduce the Bay Area to the “traditions and flavors of Swedish food,” and she’s doing this with a food she says “everyone can relate to” — a hot dog.
This classic American delicacy might not be the first thing you think of when you think of Swedish food, but Swedes love a hot dog as much as any American. Theirs just look a little different. A classic Swedish hot dog normally includes mashed potatoes and shrimp salad wrapped in a thin bread wrap. They are served by street vendors throughout Sweden.
Eudailey is the chef and owner behind Chef Hej Hej, (a typical greeting in Swedish, pronounced “Hey Hey”). Eudailey creates these hot dogs using Bay Area-based vendors, combining local ingredients with Swedish tastes. Her first pop-up was in October 2023, and her first pop-up in the East Bay was in June 2024 at Morningtide in Albany.
Eudailey grew up in Colorado, but is half Swedish and visited Sweden every few years with her family. At the beginning of the pandemic, she took a leap and moved to San Francisco. Working in a tech job, she started to get inspired by the Bay Area food scene and this sparked an interest in a non-tech career path.
“About a year ago, I realized that I really couldn’t see myself continuing on in tech and needed to figure out what I was going to do next,” Eudailey said. “And I’d always loved hosting and entertaining for friends and family, doing Swedish food.”
Realizing she didn’t have all the skills needed to turn her Swedish food idea into a money-making reality, Eudailey got a job as a line cook at Octavia in San Francisco, working there weekends from June to December 2023.
“That’s really where I learned how to run a service and to do prep and to work with all these local farmers and produce purveyors,” Eudailey said.
Around this time, Eudailey decided to start giving pop-ups a shot. She started her pop-ups under the name Swede-ish, offering a wider variety of Swedish-American food mashups such as Swedish meatball breakfast burritos.
One day while working on her pop-up menu, Eudailey remembered that she used to get a specific street food in Sweden with her grandfather: a hot dog with shrimp salad. She decided to recreate it.
“I’d only had it [the Swedish hot dog] once or twice. It wasn’t my favorite or anything,” Eudailey said. “But I mean I love hot dogs, that is something I’m passionate about. So I made it in my kitchen, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is amazing, this combo is so good.’”
She added it to her pop-up menu and the hot dog quickly became the most popular item. The hot dog also allowed her to streamline the pop-up and add more volume. Soon after, the pop-up became just the hot dogs.
Eudailey started doing pop-ups more frequently, and as of last month, she quit her full-time job and is ramping up her pop-up frequency. She said that her pop-ups in the East Bay have a great community vibe.
“San Francisco’s a little bit more of this late nighttime vibe for the pop-ups,” Eudailey said. “In the East Bay, it’s families, and they just kind of make it part of their Sunday and it’s really cool.”
She serves a current menu of four hot dogs with one special. Her two most popular are the “Classic Swede” and the “Gherkin.” The Classic Swede comes with an Oakland-based Cream Co. Meats all-beef dog, cheesy mash, Bay Shrimp salad, pickles, fried shallots, and ketchup and mustard on a Rize Up bun. The Gherkin uses the same hot dog and cheesy mash but adds relish mayo, gherkins, and pickled red onion onto the same Rize Up bun.
Eudailey partnered with Rize Up Bakery in San Francisco and they created a bun specifically for her hot dogs.
Her hot dogs range from $13 for the Lagom Dog to $20 for the Shroom Dog. Eudailey is very aware that the prices are on the expensive side.
“I’m so big on using all of these local vendors, I want to show people a new food, but I also want them to think about where their food comes from, and who we have here in the Bay, and that comes with the cost,” Eudailey said.
The Shroom Dog is Chef Hej Hej’s vegetarian offering which uses lion’s mane mushrooms because they have a similar texture and sweetness to shrimp or shellfish for a vegetarian shrimp salad.
“That’s just a fun one, I think it’s gaining popularity,” Eudailey said. She gets her mushrooms from Far West Fungi.
Her special for October and November was a cinnamon bun hot dog, or Kanelbulle Korv in Swedish. This is a Lottie’s Meats pork sausage and Rainbow Orchards house-made apple butter on cinnamon-cardamom-sugar Rize Up bun. Head to Of All Places in Albany on Nov. 16 from noon to 3 p.m. to try the sweet, seasonal treat.
Starting in December, Eudailey’s special will be the Julbord Dog, which will “bring together select flavors of a Swedish Christmas buffet.” Look for that at Hammerling Wines in Berkeley on Dec. 28.
Keep an eye on the pop-up schedule on the Chef Hej Hej website. Eudailey is constantly adding more dates and locations.
Eudailey has big plans for her pop-ups, and wants to introduce people across the Bay to her hot dogs, as well as across the country. She already did some pop-ups in Denver. People keep asking her when she’s going to open a brick-and-mortar, and she’s not sure yet if that’s the direction she’ll go in.
“I think it’s been really tough to see some incredible restaurants close their doors, and sadly, you could be the best at everything, and it still can’t be enough,” Eudailey said. “And so I’m very aware of that, and it doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t open a restaurant, but it does make you think twice about it and what your long-term goal is and so the pop-ups are a great way to test a concept, but also it can just be your business model.”
Eudailey said that her favorite part of the pop-ups has been the enthusiasm she’s seen from customers and the community.
“Pop-ups can be hard work. It’s a labor of love for sure, and the people just make it so worth it,” Eudailey said.
