Sausage King: A Taste of the Mother Country in Mission Hills

This past Saturday I had several friends over for brunch. During the week, in anticipation, I was obsessed about what I was going to serve. And, of course, I was also pondering what I going to cover for San Diego Foodstuff this week. I partly resolved the first by lighting on a recipe from Bon Appetit for baked French toast topped with blueberries and pecans—but what to serve with it? Fresh fruit, of course, but what else? I needed a protein and after discarding the idea of bacon (love it, but don’t love the lingering smell in the kitchen for the week after), I lit on sausages. And, if sausages were the answer, then I needed to go to the Sausage King in Mission Hills—thereby resolving my second issue.

Sausage King is a longtime stalwart on West Washington St. in Mission Hills. Sitting for more than four decades on the block between Falcon and Goldfinch, it’s actually a rather intimidating place from the outside. Just a glass door alongside a long silent wall that shows no hint of what’s going on inside. So, I’d never ventured in before. My bad. It’s a local favorite for a reason.

For those who haven’t read the many articles on the place, Sausage King has been in business for 44 years. Long a partnership between sausage master Fred Spenner, a native of Kassel, Germany, and John Krodel, a Wurstmacher from Bamberg, Germany, who died just over a year ago, Sausage King has provided local customers with the flavors of the mother country. In its heyday, the partners had five shops around San Diego and processed some 25,000 pounds of meat in the side room of the Washington St. shop.

Those were the days when there were several slaughterhouses in the region from whom the Sausage King could purchase fresh beef, pork and veal. Today, says Spenner, who continues to run the one shop on his own now, there are no more local slaughterhouses. But that doesn’t mean the meat they use isn’t fresh. The pork, Spenner says, is flown in fresh from a slaughterhouse in North Dakota.

The store is the essence of the anti-hip, a throwback to a long ago time of formica floors and bulky steel cash registers that required strong fingers to press down recalcitrant number keys. (I recognized the Sausage King’s register as a cousin of one my maternal grandparents had 40 years ago in their Alhambra laundromat.) The shop is small and dark, definitely in need of a fresh coat of paint, but lush in the aroma of smoked meat. Little four-inch sausages reminiscent of beef jerky hang in a long row behind a case filled with more sausages; salamis; sliced lunch meat; imported cheeses like Edam, Gouda, Austrian Swiss and Beer Kaese; and pickled herring.

Today, Spenner produces 34 sausages and lunch meats on site as well as 10 different smoked meats, like Westphalian ham, Black Forest ham and bacon. All with the help of an enormous meat grinder, an intimidating sausage machine and two hickory-fueled smokehouses—one hot for items like bratwurst and knockwurst and one cold for salamis.

Hot smoking keeps the smokehouse at a steady, hot temperature to cook the meats. Cold smoking doesn’t cook the meat, but flavors and preserves it before they go into the enormous refrigerated room to dry. There they hang or sit in rows on shelves.

In the refrigerator I saw several large salamis collecting thick mold, which Spenner explains is a necessary part of the process. “Mold pulls out the moisture from the meat onto the casing to allow the flavors to develop as it dries,” he says. “If you don’t get mold, you won’t end up with a good-tasting salami.” Of course, the mold and casing are pulled off the salami at the end of what is apparently a tricky process to achieve in San Diego, where the humidity is variable and constantly has to be monitored. “When I told people I was going to make salamis in San Diego, I was told it couldn’t be done because of the inconsistent humidity,” says Spenner. “But, we were able to overcome it.”

Spenner also sells several cuts of fresh beef and pork, special cuts just right for a good schnitzel for instance.

And, if you’re longing for a taste of Germany beyond meat, you'll find shelves filled with chocolates—Lindt, Ritter Sport, Asbach brands—along with mustards, coffee, jars of pickles and sauerkraut, packages of noodles and mixes for traditional dumplings, spaetzle and other dishes. Sausage King also brings down fresh baked goods from Streit’s German Bakery in L.A. You can pick up fresh streudel and coffee cake as well as any of a variety of rye breads.

But, really, it’s all about the sausages and throughout the morning, people filed in to get their fix. According to Spenner, the liver sausages and the wieners are the top choices. And, why not? The wieners once cooked, have an irresistible snap of the natural casing from the first bite and are packed with various seasonings. (I can’t tell you what they are—Spenner refuses to divulge closely held recipes.) And the best part? No fillers. In fact, not a heck of a lot of sodium either. With all the tasting I did that day, I didn’t end up with the puffiness you get from commercial sausages and salamis that are laden with salt.

The salamis were heavenly. There’s the spicy Hungarian salami, a gorgeous red and packed with flavor.

The yummy cervelat, made of minced pork, beef and bacon and cold smoked, is a little milder, as is the German-style salami. I also tried the Thüringer, a deeply colored beef salami with a full rich smokiness.

At the shop, Spenner gave me a taste of one of his smoked meats, Schinkenspeck, a prosciutto-like dry-cured ham, part ham, part bacon and just too good for one’s own good.

From, there I moved on to the lunch meats—he handed me a slice of veal loaf still warm, chewy and spicy with a hint of nutmeg, then made up a package for me of a light and chewy head cheese, bologna that tasted nothing like the Oscar Meyer I had as a kid sandwiched between slices of Wonder Bread; a fulsome blood and tongue sausage; and German minced bologna. And, for the first time, I tried liverwurst, It is as smooth and creamy and flavorful as pate, even if it’s made from pork, not goose.

But, what to serve at my brunch? I chose smoked bratwurst, a link of beef blood ring sausage and a regular bratwurst. All were hits on Saturday. Okay, only my friend Jolene and I ate the blood ring sausage, which I sliced and heated on the griddle along with the other sausages.

And, for good measure, I bought a weiner, bockwurst and knockwurst.

Those, I took over to my parents’ house to sample for lunch with the lunch meats, a jar of Inglehoffer stone-ground original mustard, garlic pickles and a loaf of Streit’s Berliner Land Brot rye bread. There, we had a feast reminiscent of Saturday afternoon lunches at my paternal grandparents’ when I was a kid.

Sausage King is located at 811 West Washington St.

Have some thoughts about Sausage King or other ethnic markets in San Diego? Do you have a favorite neighborhood market or shop that carries unique or unusual foodstuff? Let me know or add to the conversation by clicking on comments below:

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Continent European Deli: Gastronomic Glasnost in La Jolla

Sometimes, usually when a holiday comes, I get so nostalgic for the large family gatherings of my childhood I feel I can almost will myself back in time. It’s a visceral longing for big boisterous gatherings around food so plentiful it could practically collapse a table. And, not just any food, but traditional Eastern European dishes.

I was a lucky kid growing up with two sets of grandparents close by. My grandmothers were excellent home cooks and my grandfathers loved to eat. Actually, we all did and we ate very well. Big bowls of steaming chicken soup with won-ton-like kreplach or golf-ball sized matzoh balls; platters of stuffed cabbage, sweet and juicy with a ground beef and prunes; crispy roasted chicken; tender brisket; kasha varnishkes (bow tie pasta); chopped liver or pickled herring on slices of mini rye or pumpernickel bread; utterly sinful sweet noodle kugel (pudding) made with cream cheese and sour cream. The list goes on and on. The recipes were passed down, but it’s rare that my mother, sister or I make any of them today You need to have a large clan to feed to justify that and they just aren’t around anymore.

Walking into the Continent European Deli brought a lot of those remembrances of things past back in a rush. Behind the counter is an assortment of foods I don’t often encounter anymore: smoked fish, a line up of gorgeous sausages, stuffed cabbages, sour pickled tomatoes, a variety of salads, dark rye breads, sweet and savory piroghkis, even homemade gefilte fish. Plus, shelves filled with products that anyone from Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, Latvia, Hungary, you name it in Eastern Europe, would find familiar and comforting.

Russian chocolates, cookies and candies in festive packaging filled one wall.

On the opposite wall were items ranging from deep red sour cherry preserves, perfect for topping French vanilla ice cream, to various vegetable spreads, sauces, Russian teas and canned fish.

Even cans of German cod liver that sent shivers down my spine, but which is apparently eaten as a spread on bread.

All this is the doing of owners Irina Kanevsky and Edward Serper. They opened their first shop in 1995 on University Ave. near San Diego State University. The following year, they opened a second one in La Jolla in a strip mall off Regents Rd., just north of La Jolla Village Dr. This one, larger and with a kitchen in the back, offers homemade prepared foods and pastries. That’s where I was on Friday afternoon with Irina as my culinary tour guide.

Irina, who is from an industrial town in Ukraine, came to the U.S. shortly after the Soviet Union fell. She recognizes that many of her customers are émigrés who long for the comfort of food from home, but also encourages people who may not be familiar with the cuisine to come in and try it. “I like when people are open to tasting something new,” she says.

Irina prepared a couple plates for me filled with little tastes of different salads and foodstuff. First I tried a slice of suluguni, or village cheese, a whole milk cheese (above left). It reminded me of mozzarella but saltier. Alongside the suluguni were thin slices of sausage (above right). On the top was a Moscow Servelat, a tasty mildly-seasoned, semi-smoked pork sausage. A servelat is a German or Swiss sausage, originally made with pork and brain (brain is no longer used). In the middle was a New Moscow cured salami, also pork, but with a slightly smoky flavor. Below that was something I knew well but hadn’t tasted in years, a Jewish-style beef salami, perfectly dried and wonderfully chewy. The Continent European Deli has 90 varieties of sausages at any given time.

I also sampled a little tongue sausage, ideal for a sandwich on corn rye with deli mustard, and a handsome Canadian sausage. Officially called Old Forest Salami, it’s commonly called “flower salami” because of its shape.

Continent European Deli’s salads are a delight and perfect if you’re entertaining and want prepared appetizers. I was shocked that I enjoyed the beet salad (I’ve never managed to like beets) but it was a perfect blend of beets, walnuts, prunes, garlic and mayonnaise. I also got a kick out of the beet vinaigrette salad made with beets, potatoes, pickles, carrots and sauerkraut. This unusual combination of ingredients produces what Irina says is one of her most popular dishes. It’s simultaneously sweet, salty, crunchy and chewy. Taste buds work overtime to take it all in at once and its worth it. Equally delicious are the eggplant salads. One is like an eggplant caviar; in this salad the eggplant is baked and the result is a creamy concoction perfect for spreading on crackers. The other eggplant salad is made up of pieces of sautéed eggplant that can stand on its own with a fork.

A Russian potato salad with chicken, called Olyvie, was next. Very nice flavors and also very popular in the store. The Israeli salad—eggplant, garlic and mayonnaise—is another winner. The flavors come together to create a smooth, mild taste. The mushroom salad, however, packs a garlicky punch. If you love garlic, you’ll love this. I found the beef salad—marinated, shredded and blended with garlic and other spices—unusual and delicious, maybe something I’d use in a sandwich with lettuce and thin sliced red onion. Finally came the crab salad, similar to the Olyvie but with crab instead of chicken. It was good, but I preferred the Olyvie.

Irina also heated up an oblong piroghki topped with sesame and poppy seeds and stuffed with a magnificent combination of chicken, prunes and mushrooms. These little appetizers are made with an easy to work sour cream-based dough, filled with either savory or sweet ingredients and then baked to crispy, golden flakiness.

There’s no one shape—the piroghkis at Continent European Deli come in small squares, triangles and rectangles—and here they are filled with potato (like a knish filling, but lighter), cabbage (with its grated carrots, it’s a little sweet but oddly reminiscent of sauerkraut), egg and onion or even apple (kind of like a turnover in this case, but the filling is made of just slightly crunchy slivered apples—not lumpy chunks—happily not overly sweet).

While sitting and chatting at a table with Irina, I noticed a rack next to me filled with bags with confusing contents. Since the print was in Cyrillic, I couldn’t make out what they were. Sunflower seeds, she said, laughing. Next to them were bags of buckwheat from different countries, used to make kasha, a common sidedish literally meaning “porridge.”

Looking around, I found a number of other unfamiliar products. I could happily eat any kind of smoked fish, even smoked eel (something I first discovered decades ago in Amsterdam). The deli has a wide selection, including mackerel, salmon and sturgeon. But what were those little fish in the container? Dry moiva, I was told. These are apparently a great accompaniment to beer.

And, those browned, sausage-like items on the red platter? Homemade gefilte fish. Hmmm. I’ll save that for my next trip, but I did buy one of the cheese and raisin pancakes on the platter next to the gefilte fish. Tasting it at home, I found it to be in the same family as a cheese blintz (like a crepe) and imagined combining the ricotta cheese filling of a blintz with the blintz batter to get a pancake like this.

I’m a sucker for fun packaging. I have no idea what baby bologna tastes like, but the cherubs won me over. I’ll try it soon.

Below the baby bologna and the rows of cheese above were stacks of bread.

Since I adore a good, dense black bread I selected a loaf of organic Latvian rye. Slice this very thin and toast it to get the most of its dark, nutty flavor. It’s great with a little butter and honey or sliced cheese.

So, what’s for desert? Continent European Deli has freshly made baklava and a variety of cakes and other pastries. On the candy wall, my eye caught sight of packages of chocolate-covered something, which I discovered were chocolate-covered marshmallows. I had to try one, although Irina advised me that it would be different from what I expected. Sure enough, this was not like eating the top of a Mallomar. The ingredients list “fruit sauce” along with egg whites and agar-agar chocolate. The fruit flavor is nonspecific but it’s there and very enjoyable.

I also took home what I thought was a bar of chocolate. The elegant packaging, showing two ballet dancers in front of the Bolshoi Theater, actually contains slim, individually wrapped pieces of semi-sweet chocolate with crushed hazelnuts and French brandy. These will be parceled out slowly over the weeks.

You could get lost in all the different products sold here and if you’re not from Eastern Europe, the offerings can be confusing. Don’t be put off. I found the women behind the counter to be very helpful, so ask questions and ask for tastes. The La Jolla deli has seating inside and out, so you can also sit down and enjoy a meal.

Continent European Deli is located at 4150 Regents Park Row in La Jolla and 5961 University Ave.

Have some thoughts about Continent European Deli or other ethnic markets in San Diego? Do you have a favorite neighborhood market or shop that carries unique or unusual foodstuff? Let me know or add to the conversation by clicking on comments below: