A blog about food, wine, photography, travel, tech, pop culture, and social media...with a little geek thrown in for flavor.
I love to cook, collect and try new recipes. I'm always in search of the perfect meal, the perfect glass of wine, the perfect cup of coffee. Some people eat to live...but I live to eat.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Happy 71st, The Sausage Shoppe
On Tuesday, March 3, The Sausage Shoppe, a Cleveland culinary treasure since 1938, turns 71.
When I lived in Cleveland, I made the trek to the ‘Shoppe biweekly, sometimes weekly, always leaving with a sack-full of encased meat delights, planning my meals on the bus ride home. I always left with a smile on my face and my clothes smelling wonderfully of garlic.
Norm Heinle, his wife Carol, and their children have been running The Sausage Shoppe since 1974, after Norm’s apprenticeship with founder Hans Kirchberger and Hans’ retirement. They truly do it for the love of food, and it really shows in the sheer quality of their product, critically praised with a long list of awards over the years.
Unfortunately, artisan butchers like Norm are hard to come by these days. When Anthony Bourdain was asked by the Cleveland Plain Dealer about his Sausage Shoppe visit for No Reservations, he said, “Some young kid from New York is going to come in and open a hip restaurant. He’s going to be serving a twee little stack of German bloodwurst, warm, or headcheese with a toasted brioche and a little reduced sauce around it and he’s going to get $29.95 for it. Meanwhile, the guy who has been making it all along is going to be forgotten, and that would be a terrible thing.”
Happy 71st, The Sausage Shoppe. Here’s to 71 more.
