Serious Eats: New York
Sampling the Goods at the Newly Opened Dogmatic Gourmet Sausage System
I celebrated Columbus Day by chowing down on some tasty hot sausages. They weren't the Italian variety though. They were from the newly opened Dogmatic Gourmet Sausage System a shop that promises “the finest street food served in a restaurant environment.” For the past two years the DGSS cart, which was on display in front of the red carpet, has called Bleecker Playground home. There it has served sausages sourced from such renowned purveyors as Violet Hill Farms. But what really makes DGSS cool is how the wursts are served. Minibaguettes are toasted by being impaled on heated spikes; then the sausage and your choice of sauce is stuffed inside. Think of it as a far more sophisticated pig in a blanket, and much more delicious. Hungry New Yorkers and a dog or two were on hand for the grand opening.
Here’s a pork sausage with chimichurri. Look at the lovely green sauce soaking through the Pain D’Avignon minibaguette. The combination of smoked sausage, fresh vibrant chimichurri and crunchy bread was delicious. After I finishing the last porky bite I was left with a tiny heel of bread full of garlicky chimichurri to munch on.
And a cross-section of the pork with chimichurri. As I said the DGSS version of this classic Argentine condiment is top-notch and does a great job of soaking into the bread.
The sausages at DGSS are superb, but they're not all that filling. So I followed up the pork with a chicken sausage, topped with truffle gruyere sauce. A word to the wise: If you order this sauce be careful, when it first starts to ooze out that cheesy goodness is really hot. This might be the best chicken sausage I've ever had. It was singing with all sorts of herbs and spices. When I asked Chef Jeremy Spector about the chicken sausage he told me that it was done in a Laotian style and contained parsley, garlic, ginger and lemongrass, among other things. Leave it to a former Employees Only chef to create such a jazzy sausage.
While DGSS is, ahem, a sausage party, there's also a vegetarian option—grilled asparagus. It's listed under the menu's gourmet sausages section with a parenthetical disclaimer, "not a sausage." For some reason I couldn't bring myself to order it. I guess that since they've gone brick-and-mortar, the boys behind DGSS won't be able to participate in next year's Vendy Awards. Oh well, one park's street cart loss is another neighborhood's restaurant gain.
Dogmatic Gourmet Sausage System
26 East 17 Street, New York NY, 10003 (nr. Broadway; map)
212-414-0600
eatdogmatic.com