Just over a year ago, the meat magicians at charcuterie powerhouse Olympia Provisions unveiled OP Wurst, a sausage-centric entry into their empire of restaurants. With three locations, OP Wurst put its sausagey stamp on Southeast Division, Oregon City, and Pine Street Market. “Wurst/worst” puns abounded. I wrote in this very column that in a big sausage town, OP Wurst offered the most compelling of dogs.
A year later, it turns out sausage is a bit limiting, especially when you’re known for the sorts of fancy meat that comes thin-sliced or whipped up on charcuterie boards. OP Wurst, having buried the lede by abbreviating the company’s name in the branding, accidentally became just another hot-doggery.
It was time for a rebrand. OP Wurst would become Olympia Provisions Public House Eatery, leaning into the Division location’s neighborhood bar feel (its huge patio was already something of an oasis of human social activity, surrounded as it is by opaque new condos), pushing it even further in the direction of German beer halls with a menu reboot and a partnership with German-style brewery Rosenstadt (German, of course, for “City of Roses”).
Lucky for us, that rebrand keeps an awful lot of sausage on the menu—but adds German delights like schnitzel, beer-battered trout, and a schweinshaxe plate. The latter is less daunting than the chicharron-fried, dinner-for-two version that put Stammtisch on the German food map, but it is happily manageable for just one. It’s still a hearty whole pork shank, served over sauerkraut and potatoes in a puddle of jus worth getting a side of fries to dip in. (And at $15, you don’t have to bring a friend to split it with you.)
