DETROIT — Every dog has its day, and the coney dog’s best ones may be behind it.

Lifelong coney fans may howl in disagreement, but even the owners of metro Detroit’s top Coney Island restaurants admit that demand for Detroit’s signature dish is going downhill.

Times have changed. Menus are broader.

And frankly, lots of people these days simply prefer other foods to the almost century-old chili-topped dogs. One of the most popular is the Hani and its chicken-pita imitators — favorites of the under-30 crowd. But salads are huge with Coney Island customers, too.

“The coney hot dog is not our biggest seller anymore,” says Leo Stassinopoulos, co-founder of the Leo’s Coney Island chain — Michigan’s largest, with 40 locations. “From years ago, the coney is not that popular right now.”

Breakfast is big at his restaurants. But “the biggest business now is the salad,” he said. “I think it’s more that people like healthy stuff.”

Leo’s is famous for its Greek salad and house-made Greek dressing, “but it’s not just Greek salads. … I have like 10 of them. I have all kinds of salads,” said Stassinopoulos, 61.

Besides the Greek and the top-selling chicken-Greek, there’s the antipasto, Village, Caesar, Cobb, chef, turkey, taco, chicken finger, Michigan and spinach salads, and all have their fans.

Chicken-finger pita sandwiches are also “a pretty good item … popular with the young generation.”

Greek salads were also the most-ordered items at the old-time Spangas Coney Island Plus, which closed last week in Royal Oak, Mich., said Mel Drosis, son of founder Tommy Drosis.

The family also has a Spangas Coney Island in Livonia, Mich., which has fewer nearby competitors than the Royal Oak place and is “doing fine,” he says. But the family plans to open a new restaurant away from the Woodward corridor, and it won’t be a coney. Instead it will feature salads, soups and Greek items.

“We want to get away from the coneys and chili fries,” Drosis said. “People are definitely watching what they eat.”

At National Coney Island, the coney dog “as a percentage of sales has come down a little bit over the years, as menus have expanded and so forth,” said company president Tom Giftos.

“It’s been kind of trickling downward. There was no one event, no big drop-off at any certain time. It has been kind of a slow waning.”

He doesn’t buy the idea that people are necessarily more health-conscious, though. “I still think people want what they want and don’t think about it.” Customers tell him they still enjoy coneys “as a real treat.”

All scream for Hani

But it’s not a coincidence that sales of National’s Hani — a warm thick pita filled with chicken tenders, cheese, lettuce, tomato and mayo — have been rising at the same time. The company’s No. 1 sandwich, “it has been closing the gap (with the coney) over the years,” Giftos said.

If he plotted his sales on line graphs, he was asked — with the coney line sinking and the Hani line climbing — would the lines cross in the next 10 years or so?

“I’ll bet if we really drilled down, sometime next year they’ll probably meet,” he said.

Almost everyone agrees that the Hani is most popular with and best-known by younger generations.

“I think people start liking them at a young age and become hooked on them,” says Giftos, whose 6-, 9- and 11-year-olds “talk about Hanis all the time.”

But that doesn’t mean only kids like them. At the National in Royal Oak, open 24/7 on North Main, “the typical bar-crowd meal is a chicken-bacon Hani with a side of chili-cheese fries,” said manager Dave Howard.

Other Coney Island restaurants have followed National’s lead and also offer chicken pita sandwiches. Nothing prohibits them from doing so, but they can’t call them Hanis — even though customers routinely do.

“I think in the last four or five months, we’ve had to send out several cease-and-desist letters to other restaurants telling them they can’t use that name,” said Giftos.

Introduced in the ’80s, the Hani is what many of today’s young adults grew up with.

“I started the thing with coneys back in the day … but I transitioned into Hanis in early high school,” said Grosse Pointe native Kim Cox, 28, of Columbus. She and her friends went to the National on Mack, on the Detroit-Grosse Pointe border, and most of the kids ordered Hanis. “Only a couple would eat coneys,” she said.

When she and her husband visit her family here, her idea of nostalgia food at a Coney Island is either a Hani or a vegetarian Hani (with feta instead of chicken) and fries with cheese dipping sauce. Her husband is from Columbus, “and he gets the Hanis, too.”

The die-hards

But for die-hard coney fan Christine Vogelei of Royal Oak, nothing replaces the spicy chili dogs.

Dining at the National in Royal Oak last week with her 15-year-old daughter, Hannah Burns, Vogelei was enjoying two coneys-with-everything and a Baby Greek salad.

“I love the coney,” said Vogelei. “When I come to a coney, I want a coney dog.”

But she has a theory about why the Hani does well with young diners.

“I think it’s the chicken fingers they grew up on — they developed a taste for the breaded chicken. It’s familiar to them. … I think it’s a big generational thing.”

Eating dinner at a table nearby, friends Kelli Marcus of Southfield and Hollie Utley, of Ferndale, both 38, were having Buffalo chicken Hanis. They meet every two weeks to catch up, often at National.

Utley doesn’t dislike coneys, she said; she just prefers Hanis and rarely orders anything else.

But Marcus doesn’t eat beef and doesn’t much care for coney dogs. “My mom ate them, though,” she said.

In the back corner booth, where David and Marian Hull of Royal Oak were having dinner with their teenage daughters Erin, Nicole and Colleen, three of the five had Hanis. No one had a coney.

“I love coneys,” said David Hull. “But I’ve just recently started liking Hanis.”

But he doesn’t think the beloved dog is in danger. “I can’t imagine the coney disappearing. … I don’t see it ever going away.”

At American Coney Island — which sits beside Lafayette Coney Island as ground zero of coney-dom in downtown Detroit — co-owner Grace Keros says her coney sales haven’t gone down, and she doesn’t think the coney’s popularity is declining. Not at all.

“If you walked in here you wouldn’t think so. … People are eating them and chili-cheese fries. Or they get a coney with a salad,” she said.

She did add a chicken pita and a gyros sandwich to her menu, “but the coney is still king, and no one has really, actually come in here for a chicken pita, for example.”

Still, she acknowledges, American Coney Island isn’t like the restaurants that have proliferated in the suburbs. Its appeal goes beyond the food.

“It’s our history. It’s our tradition. It’s our location. And our product speaks for itself,” she said.

“Those other places are not Coney Islands,” she said. “They’re more like family restaurants. A coney is the last thing people get in there.”

Doggone it

Is the coney losing its luster as Detroit’s signature dish? Coney restaurants as a group are doing fine. But many owners say sales of the chili-topped dogs are declining, driven by customers’ concerns about health and their preference for other items, especially the Hani.

WHAT’S A HANI?

It’s National Coney Island’s widely copied chicken pita sandwich — the choice of legions of younger diners and a growing number of their parents.

At other places, salads have also taken a big bite out of the dog — especially the Greek salad, often with chicken.

“Times have changed. —- The coney (dog) is kind of fading out,” Mel Drosis said last week, as his family closed its landmark Spangas Coney Island Plus on Woodward after 23 years, citing increased competition and changing tastes. About 70 percent of its orders were for Greek salads, he said.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “People still eat coneys and chili fries, but it’s more a late-night thing — not at lunch, like it used to be.”

Hani HISTORY

The Hani — pronounced HAH-nee — got its start at National Coney Island’s 7 Mile and Mack restaurant in Detroit in the early 1980s, said company president Tom Giftos.

The cook, whose first name was Hani — “a pretty common Arabic name,” Giftos said — would make chicken-and-pita sandwiches for employees as the staff meal.