Thirty-three miles west of downtown Chicago, is Naperville, Illinois. Naperville has a lot to recommend it.
It’s the fourth largest city in Illinois. According to Niche (www.niche.com), Naperville is usually in the top rankings for best places to live in the US. Niche puts a lot its focus on educational institutions, but they don’t have much to say about sausage and beer infrastructure.
Here at Sausagefest, we have those priorities in mind and want to suggest that on your next visit to Naperville you pay a lengthy visit to Miskatonic Brewing Craft Kitchen.
When we stopped in for lunch the brewery sign got us in the door. What kept us there for 90 minutes was the interesting menu, the ample beer choices and our chance to talk sausage with their Executive Chef, Daniel Davis.
First off, it’s not very often you encounter a first-rate brewery with a menu that headlines five sausages. This is not the menu where the Italian sausage sandwich is batting ninth after the Monte Cristo sandwich. Nope, the font is big and it’s very obvious even to the home-schooled that Miskatonic is serious about sausage.
Having been to more than several breweries around this country, it’s not unusual to see some sausage item on a menu. At a few places, you might see a Sausage Sampler. Great Lakes Brewpub, (Cleveland) offers that entrée. But mostly, sausage sandwiches are NOT the headline items. Don’t take this the wrong way, but Miskatonic doesn’t hide their pride for their sausage.
You don’t see Hungarian sausage batting third on too many brewpub menus. It’s also too often the case that it’s the great forgotten Hall of Fame sausage – like the Harold Baines of the sausage world. How can a sausage be bad when you load it up with Hungarian paprika that gives it that copper-red mystique.
The thing about Hungarian sausage is that it’s not Italian sausage or chorizo. We’ve grown up with both of those sausages but Hungarian? Did chorizo and the Italian sausage have a child? What seasoning can give you that eye-striking hue of redness? Paprika you say. Isn’t there a sweet paprika and a hot paprika? And where exactly on the Scoville meter is the melting point of this sausage? Oh, screw it – just order it and be done with it.
As you can see from the picture below, Miskatonic doesn’t believe in the less is more idea. There is far more sausage than there is bun. Horseradish crema covers the top, a Basque piperada (a fancy way to say, onions, peppers, tomatoes spiced up with Espelette pepper) and a stone ground mustard fills the bottom of the bun. But none of these complimentary condiments detract from the Hungarian sausage. A Hall of Fame sausage can play with almost any supporting cast. The meat in the casing was well grounded, flavorful and certainly enough paprika to tell you this is not a chorizo or Italian sausage you’re dealing with.
When you are faced with this impressive sight, you need to shift priorities. The first priority was to get all the sausage consumed while artfully slathering each piece with the piperade. The bun and fries could wait. The first drink ordered was the St. Henry (an abbey-style quadruple ale) that was very good. But I guzzled that too fast to see it through to the end of the meal. Fortunately, Will (our guide and server) suggested I move to their Jabberbocky (doppelbock).
I was momentarily disoriented by the Lewis Carroll association. But Will landed me the doppelbock quickly. (You don’t want to go down the Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole while you’re also confronted by HP Lovecraft references in the restaurant name. That’s too literary of an environment when you have great sausage in front of you.) The pairing of the Hungarian spice went very well with the rich malty flavor of the Jabberbocky.
We also ordered a salad thinking we would be halfway healthy (see picture below). As eye-pleasing as the Hungarian plate was the spinach and strawberry salad was beautiful. But the sausage won out. We polished off the sausage, picked at the salad and had it for dinner later. The fries were good and the pickle was above average. They were good role players and helped the superstar shine.
One Hungarian sausage did us both in. Okay, we had some help with the beers, but the salad was not too much a factor. If you have a vegan in your party, the salads look outstanding.
Final Thoughts: Chef Daniel comes from the Publican Quality Meats (PQM) group and that high level experience and training shows up in his menu. He lists a number of quality local Midwest food and farm sources and that bodes well for Miskatonic’s future success. Quality inputs, quality food preparation get you quality food output.
I usually don’t lean to doppelbocks and abbey-style ales, but they each had a depth of flavor that was very good and long lasting. Both easily went with the Hungarian sausage and would no doubt go well with the other sausages.
They had more than ten beers on tap and a healthy cocktail list if you go there on a day when you are “beered out”.
Our Rating: Worth repeating the experience soon – three sausages out of three sausages
Contact Info:
Miskatonic Brewing Craft Kitchen.
47 E Chicago Ave, Ste 120
Naperville, IL, 60540
331-457-5777
Note: There is also a Miskatonic Taproom in Darien, Illinois.