Longman & Eagle's Saturday Sausage Shop - Chicago

These sausages are big–in both flavor and size.

But everything else about Saturday Sausage Shop is small. It only has 14 seats and is only open on Saturdays, offering limited numbers of creative, house-made links.

The shop is the brainchild of Matthew Sliwinski, a Longman & Eagle sous chef with a penchant for encased meats. He launched his project last weekend with two sausage sandwiches ($10 each).

Last Saturday the options included wild-boar-chile-garlic sausage with giardiniera, black-garlic aioli and pea shoots, and a pho-inspired sandwich. For the latter, Sliwinski laced ground veal with reduced pho broth, then tucked the sausage into a brioche bun with hoisin-fish sauce mayonnaise, slivers of jalapeño, and rice noodle salad with bean sprouts, Thai basil and a punchy lime vinaigrette. It was a pitch-perfect ode to the classic Vietnamese soup.

A recent delivery of a Slagel Farm ram means merguez-like sausage is on this weekend's menu, served with cheese and red-wine pickles.

Sliwinski is perfecting his classics for the summer; he plans to have bratwurst and all-beef franks ready to go by the time the temperature hits 80 degrees.