We shared a wonderful, rustic fall meal at Marché last night: Alsatian choucroute garnie. It’s not really a meal for the light of heart. Basically, it’s a giant mound of wine-braised sauerkraut topped with smoked and cured chunks of unctuous pork, several kinds of sausages and potatoes, served with mustard.
I have to thank Marché for this special menu. I wish they’d do more of these simple, humble family-style dinners. The price was outstanding for the quality of the meal, and the food was quite good. The restaurant offers monthly French regional dinners, also a good value, but this was a beast of altogether different proportions.
I don’t know how restaurant-heavy food blogs manage such gorgeous photos of the dishes that are served to hungry foodies. I could only manage this:
And I think I have a perfectly good reason, too. Let me explain:
You see, I was dining with The Fastest Fork in the West. By the time I finished taking these two pictures, he had demolished the boudin noir, Strausbourg, and knackworst-y frankfurter sausages, a pork knuckle, most of the pork (not rabbit, as the menu says) rillette, the quick-pickled vegetables, duck fat potatoes, duck confit, three kinds of mustard (dijon, a particularly wonderful grape must, and plum), and that entire bottle of Sweet Cheeks 2006 Dry Riesling. I was lucky to escape with a piece of frankfurter, a chunk of pork belly, and my life.
Do other foodies have these problems, these dangers, these Odyssean trials? I wonder.
Culinaria Eugenius 
do they make all the sausages? I wonder where they get the pork blood for the noir? I have never seen choucroute served with pickled veges before but it looks good.
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I’m not sure if they made the sausages, but I’ve seen pork blood at Sunrise Market on 29th. And no, pickles are not traditional — surely a nod to the must-eat-vegetables-in-every-meal-or-I’ll-die crowd. And they do add a little color.
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