I am very well-loved. I know this for a fact because I was invited to three cookouts over the weekend that featured sausages from Kramarczuk. I also picked up my own from the friendly northeast Minneapolis store, then invited people over to my house to eat them, completing the circle. In sum, between Friday night and Sunday night, I ate Kramarczuk sausages on four occasions—it doesn’t get any better. The store, founded in 1954 by a Ukranian sausage-making genius named Wasyl Kramarczuk, draws people from all over the metropolis—I waited on line for forty-five minutes. The customers in back of me were so old that they had to lean on the bakery cases for support (I let them go in front of me). My baby amused himself making towers out of imported German ketchup, and we eventually filled a bag with our treasures: Hungarian sausages, which are ruddy, mild-pepper flecked, with a robust, roasted flavor; knockwurst, mild, sweet, and milky, available in either big links or narrow hot-dog style fingers; Ukrainian sausages, big, well-smoked, profound and meaty links as powerful as arms; and Polish sausages, which are garlicky, sweet, and punchy. I’ve seen men the size of tanker-trucks shake with emotion while trying to explain the crime of polluting one of these Polish with condiments. Finally, I got two private indulgences: a fresh liver sausage, which is pale, gummy, rich, and good, and a big hunk of Hungarian bacon, cured under an icing-thick coating of red paprika. I’ve entertained a lot of visiting food-world bigwigs in my days as a Minneapolis restaurant critic, but I’ve never even tried explaining to one of them that one of the best local food experiences can be found in a backyard, peonies heavy on their stalks, bats flitting overhead, a cold local beer in one hand, and a steady progression of Kramarczuk sausages issuing from the grill.
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