South Bay Sausage Tour, pt 2

After eating lunch at Neto's, we headed up to Mountain view to check out Dittmers Gourmet Meats & Wurst-Haus. Holy Crap! Dittmer's is out of control, they have an incredible variety of sausages, smoked meats and cured meats. They make everything on sight except for their Italian Salumi and proscuitto because, well, Dittmer is German not Italian, and he's go the accent to prove it.

Dittmer!

After seeing the incredible variety of products they were selling, I was not surprised to learn that they break whole hogs at Dittmer's. It's clear that nothing goes to waste; Head Cheese, Liverwurst, smoked Hocks, if it comes from a pig then Dittmer will make it taste awesome and sell it to you.

Dittmer's has more going on than just Pork Sausage though. They also are a full service butcher shop with fresh cuts of beef, pork, lamb, veal and poultry and they are a full service deli. Unfortunately I was still stuffed from lunch, but I did grab a landjagger, some beef jerky and some sausage. The landjagger was nice and smokey. The grind was coarser than I expected which gave it a hardy texture. The jerky was wonderfully smokey and rich with just the right amount of sweetness. The sausage, unfortunately, went in the freezer, but I'll report back when it gets eaten.

South Bay Sausage Tour, pt 1

I've been hearing about a couple of top notch sausage shops in the South Bay for a while now, so earlier this week my Dad and I decided to head south and check them out.

First up was Neto Sausage Co. in Santa Clara. This family run operation has been in business since 1948, bringing the family's secret recipes over from Portugal. Their current location is a no frills operation, with an outdoor grill and a small deli and market inside.


You order your sausage, which are patties not links, outside and then take them in to get your bread and toppings. You can also buy fresh sausages (in links) and a wide variety of cheeses, some Portuguese wines and an interesting variety of other foods, primarily Portuguese in origin.


The sausage patties are quite large and really tasty. My dad got Cajun and I went for the Italian. Looking back on it, I probably should have gone for a Portuguese variety to get the full experience, but I was enjoyed my Italian quite a bit. I'm not totally sure why they do patties instead of links, though I imagine it has something to do with getting the meat cooked evenly throughout. While I appreciate the fact that they're doing it their way, I prefer my sausage in links, especially for grilling.


Their are big things in the works for Neto, they're in the process of opening a full service restaurant and bar. I hope their awesome delivery truck makes it to the new location along with their sausage.