Messy? Sure. Delicious? Absolutely
When Summerhill butcher Olliffe announced it would be taking over St. Lawrence Market favourite The Sausage King, it promised to bring along with it some enticing new lunch options. The pork for the porchetta sandwich ($6) is marinated overnight—the belly in brown sugar, fennel seeds and chilies and the shoulder in rosemary, thyme, garlic and lemon zest—before being roasted for nine hours in a little electric oven on-site. The resulting meat is fragrant, salty, slightly sweet and incredibly tender. A generous portion of it is heaped inside a soft kaiser bun and topped with a fresh tomato slice, lettuce and creamy aioli. Like all good hot sandwiches, it comes with a time limit: best to eat it quickly before the bun dissolves into a fatty, delicious mess.
The cost: $6.75 with tax
The time: 11 minutes during peak lunch hour
Sausage King by Olliffe, 92 Front St. E., 416-363-7712, olliffe.ca
Olliffe, the popular Summerhill butcher shop, put out a press release this morning to announce that it was acquiring St. Lawrence Market stalwart The Sausage King effective September 2. The new shop, The Sausage King by Olliffe, will feature gluten- and filler-free handmade sausages, as well as traditionally raised pork, beef and poultry. There will also be sandwiches, salads and other prepared foods. Co-owner and head butcher Ben Gundy will oversee operations at the market, including renovations that the release promises “will bring it up to a similar style and layout aesthetic as its other shop” (if they’re successful, it’ll be something of a departure from the rest of the market). Ark Siniak, the third owner of The Sausage King, will no longer be playing an active role in the new operation, although he’s apparently been working with Gundy over the last two weeks on sausage-related matters.
• A hiatus at the Angostura Bitters plant in Trinidad has resulted in a paucity of the boozy drink ingredient at American bars. The recent resurgence of such old-timey drinks as manhattans, old-fashioneds and dark and stormys has led to a rise in the use of bitters in fashionable bars everywhere. Freemans in New York City (think Le Petit Castor, but on the Lower East Side) is reporting that suppliers are rationing three bottles per account, on-line retailer BevMo is sold out, and San Francisco bartenders are canvassing the city, looking to hoard the stuff. At least some bars here in Toronto aren’t suffering—they’re 
Follow Toronto Life on Twitter, Facebook and via RSS