Years ago we devised a scale to evaluate a foodstuff compared to its original. We called it the Philly Cheesesteak Continuum because there is only one place to get a true Philly Cheesesteak (a long sandwich of Amoroso’s crusty bread filled with fried beef, optional onions, and topped with cheese)—Philadelphia where this sandwich was invented in 1930.

The farther you get from Philadelphia, the less true to the original. Somewhere North of Camden, NJ, they stop using fresh steak and use Steak-Um frozen beef slices. In Chicago they call it the Italian Beef and though you can see a resemblance to the Philly Cheesesteak, they use seasoned beef, hot and sweet peppers and no cheese. Maybe in California they use whole grain bread, organic beef and soy cheese. On the moon, it’s probably rocks and dust topped with green cheese.

All of this backstory is to explain the weird breakfast I had today. I stopped into a Vie de France cafe for a quick bite before running errands this morning. Vie de France has all kinds of lovely pastries pretending to be French, but we all know there are no bean jam doughnuts in France. They also carry savory baked goods like Vienna sausage rolls and curry doughnuts. This alone puts them pretty far along the continuum from French cafes.

But today’s piece de weirdness was the Fish Dog I found among the savory baked goods. The Fish Dog is a split bun filled with fingers of crispy, breaded, fried fish topped with creamed mushrooms and cheese, then broiled to brown the cheese. It was quite tasty, but if I were to notch it down a level in quality, I’d end up with a white-trash American delight: a hot dog bun with fish sticks, cream of mushroom soup and pizza cheese.

If the Fish Dog was meant to be kin to a hot dog, it is far, far down the continuum. Then again, Fish Dog might be a Vie de France original—at the start of the continuum— and all others are simply imitations.