Ground Hog Day at Otto’s

I will admit to being a bit slow sometimes. I chalk it up to the fact that my entire house is constructed of lead.

This morning, it took numerous Google searches to figure out why people kept suggesting that you cook sausage on February 2nd. And here it is: “Groundhog Day” = “Ground Hog Day.” Goddamn puns flumox me every stinking time…

But now that I get it, I’ll go ahead and jump on the pun-y band wagon. After all, I’ll take any excuse to eat pork sausage. And the best place to do that in my neighborhood is Otto’s Sausage Kitchen.

Established in 1927, Otto’s found its current place in the Woodstock neighborhood in 1929. On any given day, the air around 41st and Woodstock is filled with the smell of smoking meats, drawing people to the corner where a fellow named William controls the flow of Otto’s hot dogs and sausages from a large grill.

When I arrived there shortly after 11pm 11 AM today, William was already busy. He said he’d not noticed a pick-up in business on ground hog day, but that’s hardly surprising considering William can sell up to a couple hundred individual grilled encased meats on a good day—servicing a line that can reach halfway down the block.

Otto’s has built a reputation for top notch sausage, while maintaining a low profile in a town so fanatical about food. But knowledge about Otto’s is primarily spread by word of mouth. I only heard of it because a close friend of mine, a Woodstock local, has continually lauded the place every time I mention the wonders of another meat market. “Oh, but you haven’t tried Otto’s, yet,” he’d say. “You have got to go there.”

So I go, and in the hazy sunlight, my first bite into Otto’s hot dog produces and audible snap as my teeth go through the casing. The meat inside is moist and flavorful—a dream rendered in pork—and it’s gone too soon. But that’s okay because I have a pork sausage in queue, topped with the works. And even beneath a burden of sauerkraut, onions, and two types of mustard, the sausage flavor comes through strong: savory, a bit sweet, and coyly herbal.

Inside Otto’s, the perimeter is lined with cold cases displaying a heady range of tubed meat products. I meet up with Gretchen Eichentopf, a third generation sausage maker, and owner at Otto’s, who’s been in the business for 35 years. Along with a variety of other sausages, she oversees the creation of around twenty pork sausage products.

She explains that everything is made on site. Each sausage consists primarily of three main ingredients: sausage, an organic seasoning blend, and a natural casing (sheep for smaller sausages, pork for larger ones). It’s that simple.

Eichentopf notes with pride that Otto’s has been put in America’s top ten hot dog’s by a number of different publications and media organizations, most recently by MSN.com. She tells me that people come from around the world to eat Otto’s sausage.

“There are people from the east coast who will fly into town, rent a car and ask the people at Enterprise ‘Where’s Otto’s?'” Eichentopf says.

But what is the secret? What makes these sausages worth a cross country trip? Eichentopf gets a gleam in her eye, “Come back here and I’ll show you what makes them special.”

We walk through a set of swinging double doors into a back room where the smell of savory smoke is thick in the air. Eichentopf stops in front of what looks like a tomb made of steel. “This is our smoker,” she says, before throwing a latch to reveal several rows of sausage links hanging, bright pink, in a black smoky vault.

The sight is impressive.

Otto’s smoker was built somewhere between the 30’s and 40’s though no-one is really sure. It’s situated over a pit where an alder-wood fire burns one floor below us. The smoke is controlled through experienced, nuanced manipulation of the fire. There is no automation. But the true secret to the unique flavor of Otto’s sausages, Eichentopf explains, is the 60 to 70 years of creosote built up on the walls of the smoker. She points to a thick, shining coat of the stuff on the inside of the door. It’s comprised of nearly a centuries worth of smoke, moisture, and oils. I think the idea is that this dark layer does just what a well seasoned wok does, imparting an extra bit of flavor while protecting the smoker from rust.

Eichentopf leads me over to a rack recently removed from the smoker, full of dangling ropes of pepperoni, deep red, and as thick as a bricklayers thumb. She snaps off about four inches of the sausage and hands it to me to taste. The pepperoni is perfectly mild and flavorful. It does not have the aggressive astringent flavor found in a good deal of the pepperoni the market. It’s lovely and fresh.

But that how it works at Otto’s generation after generation. The fourth is already working the counters and the fifth was just born. It’s comforting really. At least for two more generations, every day will be ground hog day in this sweet SE Portland sausage kitchen.

And really, I don’t care what Punksatony Phil has to say about how much more winter we’ll have. Sitting outside of Otto’s today—the sun in my face and a pork sausage in my hands—it felt like summer was just around the corner.