Year of the Pig

New York City is a place to love and hate, and the Ridgewood Pork Store, located in Ridgewood Queens, is a place of old world New York charm, a place to make you love it.

A couple weeks ago, Squidocto brought me some sample sausages from the Ridgewood Pork Store, and I was really impressed. The next time I found myself over at Squidocto’s place, a visit to the pork store was in order and we walked around the corner to the Ridgewood Pork Store, located at 516 Seneca Avenue.

From the outside of the store, there is nothing to really grab your attention at first glance. It looks like a plain Queens store front, with an awning advertising it as a “European Meat Market.” A closer inspection shows store windows loaded with kitschy Pig statues, European flags (I think I can identify Romania, Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic) and plastic flowers surrounding imported European foodstuffs and a selection of hanging cured and smoked sausages. That’s enough to make me curious.

Upon opening the front door you are immediately greeted with the savory smell of smoked meat, and a step over the threshold takes you into a cozy and inviting shop, filled with delicious looking jars and cans and various imported food. Despite all that, my eyes were immediately drawn past the nice looking meat counter, to the butcher blocks overflowing with sausages of every size and color.

We were promptly recognized and greeted by the proprietor of the shop, a friendly fellow who happened to be holding a whole, albeit small, pig. He saw my camera and lifted the pig up with a nice smile, jokingly posing for a photo:

Seeing the whole pig and all the normal butcher shop tools like a bandsaw and various saws and knives neatly tucked away in the corners and hanging from racks, left no doubt that the Ridgewood Pork Store makes all of its own sausages on premises.

Before I could take it all in or even ask a question, the proprietor (whose name, sadly, I did not learn) read my mind and eagerly began to slice up all sorts of samples for me, Alissa, and Squidocto to try.

Unfortunately for non-Romanian speakers like us, there was quite a language barrier, but that did not stop the pork store proprietor from showing us a great time. He eagerly sliced up more and more samples until we could sample no more. We did have a little difficulty discussing the finer points of the meats, but with some repeated questions and a little guesswork and interpretation from Alissa, we were able to get some good information about the meats we sampled. No matter what, it was a great place to go, and whatever the proprietor lacked in English speaking ability he more than made up for in enthusiasm and friendliness.

Of course what really makes this place are the great meats. So many meats were coming at us that it was a bit of a blur, but we tried a healthy variety of pork. I will have to go back for the beef. At some point we had to stop because the samples were just lined up and we could no longer remember all the varieties we had tried. I pointed out a few of the ones that were my favorites: his Chorizo, a Bulgarian Salami, some Canadian Bacon, and another sausage which I believe is called Banatska. He wrapped up goodly portions of each in paper and rang me up…a bargain at under twenty bucks.

The next day, back at home, Alissa and I took our time and sampled all the meats we had gotten. The Canadian Bacon was quite good, with a spicy, thick paprika-heavy rub caked onto the outside. It is very smoky in flavor and kind of piquant. It is delicious thinly sliced and packs a big punch of flavor in small quantities. While we were in the store we tried another interesting, red-tinted Canadian Bacon that was cured in wine. The Bulgarian Salami is the big boy in the picture, a really fine hard salami, potent and peppery. The Chorizo is wonderful, a course grind of smoked pork, heavily seasoned with Paprika and spiced so that it is red in color, and pretty damn hot. Squidocto sent me this link to the wikipedia article on Chorizo which outlines the differences between various kinds of Chorizo. This one is more like the Spanish variety, cured and ready to eat, not raw pork like the Mexican Chorizo I am more used to here. My overall favorite would have to be the Banatska. It is a thin slightly sweeter sausage with a heavily smoked flavor and a fairly hard and chewy outside. The inside is juicy and delicious. The fat in the center liquefies when you take a bite and the outside leaves you with something to chew on. Really really good.

For anyone that finds themselves out in Ridgewood Queens, the Ridgewood Pork Store is a place to visit. I think the owners have some other locations, and if I find out where they are I will post, and visit, them.

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