Anyone want to, um, spill the bacon here?
Enquiring Joes want to know. :-D
It's refreshing to see more charcuterie going on in the area, and see the quality and breadth of the products available improve.
I've almost always known of someone in the area making sausage: I can remember when Mark Ivey and others were making housemade sausages at the departed Fowler's. But there's definitely a renaissance now. I started seeing housemade sausages in local restaurants. At the beginning, a few of them were a bit dry and needed some work. Julia told me [well, I read it in one of her books ;) ] that when due to some "misplaced scruple" she put too little fat in her sausage mix, she always wound up with a poor sausage. The sausages around Durham are getting better: I had a really good pair of frankfurters for lunch several days ago at Guglhupf, and really like the house-made hot dog at BCBB.
In terms of breadth, BCBB also makes their own bacon, and makes lardo as an occasional add-on. Phoebe Lawless at Scratch puts her lardo on pizzas and other products occasionally. And of course we have Farmhand Foods with their sausages of local provenance, dispensing them through other retail outlets and through their own food truck, or perhaps I should say food trailer. :)
I'm sure I'm missing other folks and meats here, but make no mistake, I want to eat them all. :) And the market hasn't seemed to saturate yet, so I'm happy to see another business trying to get off the ground. So if anyone else knows anything about these folks, do pass it on.
mmm I love EVERYthing at Guglehopf and BCBB!
Julia
of hazelnutblog.com
Posted by: Julia | 19 December 2011 at 03:59 PM