Growing up in Wisconsin, I never spent much time in Milwaukee. We went to Brewers games every few years and drove the bypass everytime we visited family, but otherwise nothing. We had nothing against Milwaukee, but with three kids with three different set of priorities it was hard to find something for everyone. As I grew into my late teens, I made trips to Summerfest, but never stayed much past closing time. Not surprisingly, without any real Milwaukee experiences, I never understood Milwaukee’s draw on folks. Now that my baby sister and her growing family lives there, we have gotten to know some parts of Milwaukee that we never knew existed and have grown to like the city.

First, we got to know Groppi’s, an Italian grocery that competed well in the Italian Sausage tasting. Then it was Leon’s, a burger/custard stand that does custard much better than anywhere else and burgers a little worse than everywhere else. Last Friday, we ate epic Burek and Cevaps at Three Brothers.

European Homemade Sausage (photo by SteveZ at lthforum.com)

This trip, my sister and I picked up coffee at Alterra and drove a little South and a little West to a storefront that looked like it was straight out of the 1950s. For good reason too, because not much appears to have changed since then. This phenomenon is not limited to the decor and facade, it appears as if the product and producer have not changed since then either.

Frank Jakubczak has been making sausages at European Homemade Sausages for nearly 40 years. He took some time off, trying to retire, but the demand for his product brought him back on a limited basis. He was behind the counter when we walked in early on Saturday morning. He called us “early birds” and helped us make decisions. He was helpful and affable. The place was absolutely packed with beautiful Eastern European sausages, but the one that caught my eye was the blood sausage with tongue.

Looking at the yard long tube of sausage, the beauty is obscured. Once I saw it sliced, I was awestruck. The deep red of the blood sausage, studded with white cubes of fat, and abstract shapes of brined tongue. It looked perfect.I was hopeful that it was taste as good as it looked, but the taste could not live up to the beauty. That being said, it was not a bad sausage. It was so visually arresting that I expected a much more aggressive flavor.  However, it was mild, which when talking about blood sausage is not surprising (and not many want a strong blood flavor, if there is such a thing). The tongue was a nice textural contrast, but again was pretty mild. The sausage was lovely and mild with textural changes everywhere and maybe that is what it is about. This, maybe, is one of those moments where you don’t get a huge punch of flavor.

The same can not be said for the Hungarian hunter’s sausage that I picked up there. Mildness was not part of this dried sausage which packed heat with extreme porkiness that only comes when expertly drying good pork. In a shop packed with, what appeared to be lovely bratwurst, knackwurst, and other sausages of that ilk, but I was drawn to these dried sausages. These were simple little treats.

After catching a look at the wonderment of the blood and tongue sausage, I thought that something simple would be a good bookend to that beast. Frank hit the nail on the head with the hunter sausage. To me, this exemplified a lot of what I love about Milwaukee.

There are places that produce simple things – simple, amazing old world things, but in these same spots, exist extraordinary things that are no less old world. In most other places though, if you can do the extraordinary, you stop doing the simple, no matter how well you execute it, but not Milwaukee. The simple is no less appreciated.