This one is an argument, and it’s mine. There used to be a butcher in every small town and dozens in every city; now a handful of companies make most of the sausage, and it’s gotten hard to tell one fresh sausage from another or one smoked one from another. We gave up a lot of flavor and diversity at the grocery store — and the artisan shops popping up everywhere mostly, in my humble opinion, skimp the same way. I’ll keep the facts sourced and the opinions labeled as opinions, walk through exactly where the flavor went — the meat, the spices, the casings, the animal itself — and land on the only reliable way I’ve found to get the good stuff back: make it yourself, and hold a standard a factory can’t afford to.
Still to come — the standard I hold. The last chapter is my own answer to all of this: the restaurant I’m opening, and the rules I won’t break — fresh garlic cloves from the bulb (never powder), fresh herbs, only natural casings, and every animal sourced from farms within thirty miles that I know by name. I’ll write it once the doors are closer.
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