Okay, you're clearly going to have to check your Freudian slips, double-entendres, and latent whatever fantasies at the door here, because I photographed sausages, I ate sausages, and, well, I LOVED the sausages.
Last Monday I got an email invite to Toronado's Oktoberfest and, since I well remembered my chagrin over missing last year's beer and sausage bash, this event was a seriously oh-holy-jesus-in-a-jury-box-there's-no-freaking-way-I'm-missing-this type of thing. I mean, hello? Beer! Sausages! Beer! Meat stuffed into suspicious skin films by even more suspicious means! I kid. Though I have had my fair share of food phobias and even still harbor a few (I mean, what is it that makes tofu so squidgy, really?), I have never been afraid of hot dogs, bratwurst, sausages, or anything else you might want to stick in a bun. I'm really trying hard not to make this post dirty -- honestly!
After two years of living in San Francisco, I had never managed to eat at the fair Rosamunde Sausage Grill on Lower Haight. This wasn't because I hadn't tried, because I did! Several times, while sipping the good Aventinus brew at Toronado, did I mention my hankering for a good, hot sausage, but it was always met with derisive catcalls and thoroughly ungentlemanly and, frankly, unsanitary remarks. So, finally, it's again Oktoberfest and, since I need to gird my loins to deal with Hateful Jim on The Apprentice: Martha Stewart, I rang up a few friends and told them we were supping on Rosamunde sausages and Toronado beer that night.
We got to Rosamunde right around six-ish and stared ravenously at all their offering ($4.00 gets you a sausage in a French roll with your choice of two free condiments: sauerkraut, grilled onions, sweet or spicy peppers, or spicy beef chili). What to choose! I mean, there was lamb, beef, pork, duck, and veal! Not only that, but there was figs, peppers, onion, leek, peppers, cherries, and beer! (Those were the delicious complements that were ground right into the various meats. Ooh, beer...) Did I want the Merquez with spicy lamb AND beef? Two succulent meats for the price of one? No, I liked the duck with figs. Wait, did you see the Cajun-smoked spicy pork? Sorry, no -- better make it the smoked lamb with sun-dried tomato and potato. Wait, wait -- hold that idea, because here comes a better one: the beer sausage with spicy pork and beef topped with grilled onions and dabbed with German mustard. Yeah, that's the plum order. Clearly.