Going to Alinea was on the mind blowing side. My friend Pat gave me Alex Kapronos’ book Sound Bites: Eating On Tour With Franz Ferdinand
“As a spoonful of chestnut soup with bacon ice cream passes my lips, I want to laugh, because I can’t believe what’s happening in my mouth. I’ve never experienced this before. After early childhood, there are few opportunities to experience a completely novel sensation, so when you come across one, you’re not quite sure what to do.”
Needing to ground ourselves, what would be more natural than some sausage? Off to Hot Doug’s we went. Hot Doug’s is Doug Sohn’s Chicago charcuterie (or as he prefers “encased meat”) palace.
He makes his own sausage and while his standard offerings (thuringer, bratwurst, Polish) are great, it is the weekly specials that give the place a real twist. Ever had an Alsatian tart, the estimable tart flambée? They are wonderful: onions, bacon, and crème fraîche on a thin pizza-like crust. One of Doug Sohn’s specials that day was a reconstructed Alsatian tart, made of bacon sausage with crème fraîche, caramelized onions and Chaumes cheese. Other specials included a saucisse de toulouse with black truffle butter and orange pistachio duck pâté and the celebrity sausage, The Teuben, a corned beef sausage with Russian dressing, sauerkraut and swiss cheese (most properly dedicated to the recently deceased breakfast sausage king, Bob Evans).
We ordered two standards, namely a Chicago-style hot dog (had to) and a bratwurst (pork-only, not pork and veal). I also had to have one of the specials, the bleu cheese pork sausage with a creamy pear sauce and smoked almonds. On Fridays and Saturdays, Doug fries his french fries in duck fat. I had duck fat french fries once before at The Butcher Shop in Boston and have been craving them ever since. Anyway, we engorged ourselves — these are really well done sausages and the duck fat fries…mmmm, duck fat. They were delicious.
Quick notes:
1) If you have the occasion to go, do. However, allow time for the line. We queued for about twenty minutes. We did not have any trouble finding a place to sit once inside.
2) This is a fun place to go to. Doug is obviously passionate about his work and as a bonus, is also pretty funny.
3) I felt we had to go to Hot Doug’s not only for the sausage, but also as a sign of respect for Doug who openly defied Chicago’s ridiculous foie gras ban.
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