In the often-time Saturday afternoon movie, Bull Durham, it is said that “sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.” This sausage taste-off had a little bit of each of those. Over the past weeks, I have stopped by a number of local sausage shops picking up their sausages. This weekend while having a family holiday celebration, we had ourselves a little taste off.

For the most part, the tasting was a rousing success. The one big “ugh” was the surprise forfeit of one of my favorites, Riviera Italian Imported Foods. After thawing the sausages (in butcher paper), it appeared as if the meat and fat had separated. Without Riv’s sausages looking in full form, I decided to pull them. This really burned me as I was at Riviera just a few days pre-cookoff and I had put off going to Rosario’s on the South Side because I felt that four contestants was a good number.

Sausages in the Snow

The three remaining were delicious. In the picture above, the sausages on the left were from Groppi’s, Milwaukee’s mainstay neighborhood stop for Italian staples in the Bayview neighborhood. I had also picked up a few mild Italian sausages for a palate cleanser. This little shop in Bayview has a great beer selection and a great sausage case. It is Milwaukee. These sausages were the consensus spiciest (not mine) and were the plumpest.

The sausage in the center is from Chicago favorite, Bari Foods. A sandwich staple on West Grand Street near downtown, Bari has a number of sausages on the east side of their deli case. These sausages stand out as being the ones that look most like typical sausages.

The sausage on the right is from far West Chicago sausage shop Nottoli and Son. Nottoli is a small neighborhood shop on Belmot about a half mile West of Harlem that houses more sausages per square foot then nearly anywhere else that I have been. This sausage has a beautiful red hue and, in my tastes was the spiciest.

As I prefer with in nearly all cases, the sausages were grilled. Since I was not playing on my home field, the fuel was propane not charcoal, but we would not be deterred. With temperatures in the single digits, cooking took a ton of time, but once the sausages were done, the contest started. We ate the sausages supplemented by some homemade giardiniera

We had 8 tasters who ranked the sausages from one to three. Once the sausages were ranked, I averaged the rankings to determine the winner. The winner was Nottoli and Son. Oddly, three of us voted the same way that ended up. Of the remaining five, the order of preference was 1 to 3 or 3 to 1.  Nottoli and Son never received a ranking of 3. The runners up were very close as well with Groppi’s edging out Bari by just a little.