C & R Market has been making Polish sausage for 3 generations
Polish sausage, that holiday and year-round favorite, takes on an extra dimension of tradition when you consider one of its makers in Milwaukee: C&R Market, a one-room corner store on a house-lined block on the south side.
The longtime shop has been making Polish sausage for three generations now, and the shop’s version is distinctive for a couple of reasons.
C&R’s proportion of marjoram makes the garlicky sausage taste like a lightly herbaceous harbinger of spring (no wonder Polish sausage is synonymous with Easter).
Second, C&R’s links dwarf standard links of Polish sausage. Each is roughly the length of three typical sausages at other shops; one link weighs about a pound.
Owner Lisa Yanke said the change came about in her father’s era at the shop, when customers were ordering the sausages so fast and furious that the store couldn’t keep up. Conrad Cesarz, her father, came up with the time-saving device of tying off the sausages less often.
“This is ridiculous, we’re going to make them longer,” is how she recalled it.
Yanke’s grandfather started the shop around 1935. At the time, it was called Myron’s and was farther south on South Ninth Place, closer to Cleveland Avenue. Myron Klimaszewski, a native of Poland, bought the building with a watch and some change, she said.
In 1967, he moved the shop to its current location, at Ninth Place and Manitoba, in a building that dates to 1915. Cesarz then operated it from 1979 until 1999, changing the name of the shop to C&R, his and his wife’s initials. Customers kept calling Myron’s house by mistake, looking for the store.
Yanke took over the shop in 1999. Although she has help at the store, she keeps the seasonings secret. “I’m the only one who mixes the sausage,” she said.
The Polish sausage, at $5.99 a pound and made from her grandfather’s recipe, is the store’s No. 1 seller year-round, she said, but C&R also makes classics like Hungarian and Italian sausages, as well as hot Polish and around 20 kinds of bratwurst and other flavored fresh sausages, including wild mushroom and Swiss.
Yanke experiments with new flavors every couple of months. Some of the varieties aren’t always on hand in the meat case, like caramel apple bacon brat, or the cherry bomb, with whiskey-soaked cherries, but they can be ordered.
“We’ve expanded the line quite a bit. I like to play around,” she said. If the flavor takes off, great, she said; if not, it’s on to the next one.
The store has hot ham and rolls on Sundays, taking care to package the hard rolls in paper to keep them crisp. It custom cuts meat and sells packaged meat deals. In spring, orders for pig and chicken roasts usually begin taking off, although the pandemic robbed the store of almost all its sales of pig and chicken roasts last year.
Until Easter, though, the focus will be on Polish sausage. It’s tradition, and some customers get the sausage only for Easter and other holidays, including Christmas and, increasingly, Thanksgiving, Yanke noted with some wonder. So, it’s all hands on deck at C&R. “I pull in all the family. Even my 89year-old dad said, ‘Do you need me this year?’ “Yanke said. Armed with a box cutter, he’s in charge of opening deliveries.
“He calls himself the custodian of the dumpster,” Yanke said.
She asked if he was sure he wanted to work at the shop during the pandemic. “Well, I’m not going to be shaking anybody’s hand,” he told her, and he’s had both his COVID-19 vaccinations. But customers do love to talk with Cesarz at the store, his daughter said.
C&R carries another Eastern European essential for Easter, too: butter lambs. They’re $2.69 each, first come, first served.
Polish sausage orders of 10 pounds or more can be called in, at least a day in advance. Smaller orders are simply made in the store. Customers step to the left to form a line, with a limit of six in the store at a time.
“There may be a line outside with the social distancing, but we keep it moving fairly fast,” Yanke said. “Try not to bring the whole family,” she said, laughing.
Hours during Easter week: 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 8 a.m. to noon and 3 to 5:30 p.m. on Good Friday and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. The shop is closed on Easter.
Normal hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday, 8 to 4 p.m. Sunday and 8 a.m. to noon most Sundays. C&R is closed Mondays and the last Sunday of the month.
3001 S. Ninth Place, a block north of West Oklahoma Avenue. (414) 747-9158. candrmarketmilwaukee.com
Contact dining critic Carol Deptolla at carol.deptolla@jrn.com or (414) 2242841, or through the Journal Sentinel Food & Home page on Facebook. Follow her on Twitter at @mkediner or Instagram at @mke_diner.