What are your top toppings?

Onions, hot fudge, pepperoni, mustard, even rhubarb, toppings are a way to personalize a food item, and to some, what’s squirted or sprinkled on top is just as important as the main dish underneath.

People who work with toppings every day end up with strong opinions about them, it turns out.

Ciara Lagarde is a manager at Water Street Cafe in Laconia. She said there’s a right way to top waffles. “Nutella and Strawberry,” Lagarde said. “You have to at least have pure New Hampshire maple syrup. Pecans, whipped cream, those are the most popular.”

“I think toppings make things better. It depends on what it is, but it enhances what you’re having,” said Rose Pucci, owner of the Union Diner in Laconia. “I have so many different toppings.” Many of the foods she serves are topped with something, such as her waffles and pancakes. Lunch items get topped too, such as her “Martini burger,” which has cream cheese and green olives.

Pucci has been serving a “Windy City” hot dog just about since she opened her diner. It’s an homage to a Chicago-style hot dog, which is an all-beef frank topped with onions, tomato, pickle relish, mustard, sport peppers and celery salt.

“They’re fantastic,” Pucci said of the Chicago dogs. “I have family in Chicago. Whenever I travel there, I always have one in the airport.”

Of course, her diner is 1,000 miles away from the Windy City, and many of her patrons are uninitiated. It sometimes leads to a little conversation between guest and server.

“Usually it’s, ‘What’s a sport pepper?’” Pucci said she has to special order the peppers, which are small, pickled, and about as spicy as a pepperoncini. “Then they try it, and they’re hooked,” she said. “People love it. It’s a unique item, I wouldn’t want to get rid of it.”

Kaylon Sweet operates the Silo food truck, parked at Twin Barns Brewing Company in Meredith, where hot dogs are on the menu. While a Chicago dog follows a strict ingredient list, Sweet prefers to let his imagination run. “Hot dogs are just salty tubes of meat. It’s the best thing in the world. Why not put some crunched up Cheetos on it?”

Sweet also owns Osteria Poggio, a restaurant in Center Harbor, where he takes a similar approach to his pizzas. A balanced approach is important when considering pizza toppings, he said.

“If you’ve made a good dough, you don’t want to cock it up by putting (bad) ratios of toppings on top,” Sweet said. “I want to have sweet, savory, some bitter, acid and salt.”

On his pizza menu currently is a “Summertime” pizza, which has a roasted garlic base, rhubarb, goat cheese, and smoky and spicy nduja sausage. “That pizza itself is pretty balanced, what can we do?” Sweet finishes the pizza with slices of strawberry and a drizzle of honey. “That brings it back to the garden.”

At Lakeside Famous Roast Beef and Pizza, Brennan Hobbs said the most popular pizzas are simply adorned.

“Pepperoni is the go-to,” Hobbs said, explaining that the slices of spicy sausage add a little grease along with the meat. Grilled chicken is the second most popular topping, he said. It’s not listed on the menu, but he likes to make a pizza with corned beef, thousand island dressing and sauerkraut. “A reuben pizza,” he said.

Hobbs said that when topping a pizza, exercise some restraint.

“Sometimes, less is more. If you try to load a pizza up too much, it takes away from the experience of eating a pizza,” Hobbs said.

Pizzas are popular sellers at The Mug Restaurant in Center Harbor, said Amy Elfline, who, along with her husband, has owned the business since 1996. Some of the items have been on the menu for several decades, she said, such as the “Ben’s California” which is actually a Hawaiian pizza, topped with pineapple and ham. It got its name because one of the prior owners discovered the combination while on vacation in the Golden State.

If burgers are your jam

More popular, though, are the burgers at The Mug. Ursillo goes through 20 pounds of freshly ground beef every day during the summer, and sometimes has to run back to the butcher for a re-stock before dinner service.

Elfline said customers are particular about their burgers. “My favorite burger is the ‘Blue Shroom’ burger, without bread, on a bed of lettuce. People are very specific about what they like on their burgers, for sure.”

Nostalgia plays a significant role, too. Some of their burgers recipes are close to a half-century old, and she said they wouldn’t dare change them.

“The people that order the things that have been on the menu since the '70s, they come up to the lake every summer. They used to get that burger as a kid, now they’re bringing their kids,” Elfline said.

That doesn’t mean that diners won’t take a leap, said Rick Morten, chef at Patrick’s Pub in Gilford. “We have several different burgers on the menu,” Morten said. A recent concoction is called the “Jam Session” and has triple-berry jam and brie cheese. “You’ve got the sweetness from the jam, the salty creaminess from the cheese, and the savoriness of the burger, and all those flavors blend well together.”

What are they putting on burgers at Surfside in Meredith? Owner Steve Fields answers with another question: “What aren’t we putting on burgers?” Fields has made a name for his restaurant with wild toppings for their specialty burgers. Perhaps the weirdest is the “Silverback,” created in honor of a music management company, and features peanut butter, jelly and a sliced banana on top of the beef patty.

“It’s surprisingly popular,” Fields said.

Despite all of the effort that goes into the specialty burgers, he said he appreciates it when customers order a simple, conventional hamburger. “It shows that you don’t need a bunch of crap on top to make it taste good. To be honest with you, that’s what I eat if I’m going to eat one.”

The scoop on ice cream toppings

When it comes to ice cream, Larry Litchfield, owner of Sawyer’s Dairy Bar in Gilford, feels the same way. Name an ice cream topping, and they have it at Sawyers, Litchfield said. Most popular are hot fudge and butterscotch, marshmallows, candies and sprinkles. But when he makes an ice cream for himself, he passes by all of them.

“We’re kind of purists. I don’t like them. I love ice cream, but I don’t like anything on top or anything like that,” Litchfield said.

At Jordan’s Ice Creamery, manager Madison Duclos said she’s seen some strange combinations. Peppermint stick ice cream with pineapple on top, for example. She likes marshmallows in her ice cream, but doesn’t understand the popularity of marshmallow topping. There’s a raging debate among the scoopers over whether rainbow sprinkles are better than chocolate, but they agree that raspberry truffles are an underappreciated option.

At Osteria Poggio, chef-owner Sweet said the toppings make the dish and, if carefully considered, can provide “the perfect bite.”

“Toppings are the bees knees,” Sweet said.