Box Frites is no longer just frites in boxes. They’ve got hot dogs now. They’re also in boxes. (Also: Fried pies.)

One such dog is the Buffalo Dog, an innovation so stunning I’m shocking neither I nor Perkins came up with it first. It’s what it sounds like, unless it sounds to you like either a hot dog made from buffalo meat or a buffalo-dog hybrid, because it’s not those things. It’s a hot dog covered in Buffalo-wing sauce and sides:

The sauce is a mix of wing sauce and blue-cheese dressing, so it’s pink instead of bright red. The carrots and celery on top are pickled.

I really can’t say enough about the concept here: It’s football flavor on a ballpark-friendly (and baseball-appropriate) delivery method. And it’s delicious. The sauce is spicy and flavorful enough that you never forget you’re eating something Buffalo-flavored, but it doesn’t overpower the hot dog itself. And the bun — a potato bun — is sweet, and the pickled vegetables have a nice acidity to them, plus crunch. All the stuff you need.

I should say though that the above-photographed Buffalo dog was the third I’ve had and also the third-best. It was purchased about an hour before game time, so perhaps it wasn’t as fresh as those produced in the high-turnover middle innings, or maybe the Box Frites staff weren’t fully warmed up yet. It had a little too much sauce, for one thing, which got messy — though not enough to trivialize the concept. And it just didn’t taste as awesome as the first two. Maybe the novelty’s wearing off?

Until I had tonight’s Buffalo dog I was ready to call this my new Citi Field go-to, given its strong length-of-line:price:tastiness ratio. Now, after this evening’s lackluster performance, I’m not prepared to say that. Instead I’ll say it’s a worthy regular that could perhaps bloom into a superstar.