If you’ve ever been enjoying a pint of Cream Ale or Ring of Dingle at Sun King Brewing and got the hankering for more than a bag of chips or a delivery pizza, downtown’s pioneering craft brewery now has you covered. Oca, Goose the Market’s much-anticipated first expansion location, is slated to open to the public this Friday inside of the brewery’s flagship location on College Avenue. Featuring a full line of salumi and specialty sausages, as well as hearty Alsatian-style choucroute platters, pretzels, and grab-and-go sandwiches, the sleek meat counter is much more than just a place for beer lovers to fill their bellies. It’s a further extension of Goose the Market founder Chris Eley’s culinary talents and desire to give local diners something truly special. Newly created signature sausages include the coarse-ground Nuremberg sausage with bacon and caraway, a weisswurst made from veal and pork with white wine and lemon peel, and a pheasant sausage that’s a riff on the French classic cassoulet garnished with duck confit and white beans.
“Our tasting room has changed considerably in the last few years,” Sun King Brewing co-founder and owner Clay Robinson says. “We used to be primarily a place for people to fill growlers. But many more of our fans want to drink their beers here. Of all the feedback that we got from customers, the most common request was that we offer food.” Collaborating with Eley and Oca manager Mike Monaghan, Robinson got more than just a place for his customers to get quick bites but a destination sausage counter that food and beer lovers alike can celebrate.
Eley and Monaghan spent hours fermenting cabbage to give it the softer tang of French-style cabbage. And they worked on specially smoked pork chops and cured pork belly to give a richness to their choucroute platters. Among the more playful items is a German-style currywurst that comes topped with beet and potato hash and a crab cocktail. It’s a German-American fusion that combines all the best parts of Oktoberfest and a New England lobster roll. Working on-site at the brewery, Robinson says, means that Eley and Monaghan’s crew can use the unfermented beer and other leftovers from the beer-making process for cooking, and Oca’s offerings will continue to change and evolve, just as Sun King’s slate of beers has expanded and developed over the years.
Oca opened to a private media event on Monday, November 6, but will be fully open to the public by this Friday, November 10. Oca will be open one hour after the brewery opens and will close one hour before it closes. For more information and to check out what’s on the menu, check out their website or Oca SKB on Facebook. And bring your appetite!
