Found Treasure: El Salchichero California Chorizo

August 13, 2021 – I’m not going to say it’s the best sausage I’ve had. 

But I will say this: If I could only eat one and only one sausage for the rest of my life…

If I could take one sausage to a tasting showdown for my soul…

If I could select only one sausage to stash on the space shuttle as the planet’s intergalactic representative…

I’d be happy to lift off with the California chorizo from El Salchichero.

I struggle to describe what makes it so banging good. (BTW, El Salchichero crafts the bangers for both Scrumpy Fish and Chips food truck and The Parish Publick House, which are also delicious.)

Part of it is the quality of pork sourced from Rancho Llano Seco in Chico, a pasture-raised family farm operation. Another enchanting element comes by way of a unique spice blend spun around three Cs—cardamom, cumin and caraway. Then there’s the flavor-escalator chili-pepper party summoned from four different types of chilies.

Beyond that, I can’t quite articulate why it’s so tasty. 

I can say the California chorizo is good enough that it changed Chris LaVeque’s life. 

He’s the founder and chief meat tube engineer at El Salchichero, and he’s also quick to indicate the recipe isn’t his.

He credits Justin Severino of Severino’s Community Butcher, the farmers market darling where he interned and then built from after Severino moved across the country.

The life-changing moment, according to LaVeque: “I loved butchery and always wanted to get into it,” he says. “It was this [California chorizo recipe] that got me. It was, ‘Holy f**k this is delicious. That sausage set the precedent for me working with meat.’”

That precedent takes three dimensions, according to LaVeque, namely quality ingredients, fresh ground spices and creative applications.

His thoughts on those three fronts go like this:

Ingredients: “To get the best [results], you use quality ingredients and you use fresh ingredients. We don’t use gnarly shit.”

Spices: “I was always in the kitchen with my ma growing up. Our spice pantry was insane. It was like going into a spice house.”

Creativity: “It’s just in my brain, man. I love doing flavors people would not think of doing themselves. And it creates confidence for them to do stuff in their home cooking. It doesn’t have to be black pepper and salt.”

To those last two points, LeVeque saying the Severino effect was the life-changer can only be partly true, because, as LeVeque says, he had the principles of mindful sourcing and cooking in place since he was a sprout. 

“We raised our own poultry and we had a huge-ass garden growing up, and our whole neighborhood had an open-door policy about having all the neighborhood kids over for dinner,” says LeVeque, who grew up in Boulder Creek. “I’ve eaten like this my entire life. There’s no other option for me. We didn’t eat fast food. When I cook I make way too much because I think someone might come over.” 

The purpose of this piece is to declare my abiding love for Salchichero’s California chorizo, but that’s far from the only meat to grind. 

The newly expanded and reopened Venus Kitchen + Cocktails, meanwhile, has introduced a Salchichero sausage board. 

Down the way from Salchichero’s kitchen in the Swift Street Courtyard area, longtime collaborator Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing puts El Chich’s cured meat and bones to work for corn dogs, sandwiches and dog bones. 

Companion Bakery deploys Salcichero goodies for its ham-and cheese croissant and summer sausage sandwich.

While the savory sausage blends would be enough to make this place noteworthy—on top of the chorizo, see also the seasonal candy cap lardo with pork back and wild candy cap mushrooms, hibiscus and sumac or the summertime peach-and-basil pork or the chicken/duck combo with blueberry and thyme—there’s still more to mention. 

The shop stocks fresh-cut options of beef, pork, chicken, duck, and rabbit, as well as house-made mustards, sauces and pickles. Other jewels include pre-marinated Szechaun pepper skirt steak and Moroccan half-chicken with turmeric, sumac, grains of paradise, cardamom, basil seeds, and preserved lemon.

“It goes back to getting creative with spices and having people eat stuff they wouldn’t normally pair together,” LeVeque says. “I don’t know where the recipe ideas came from, they just popped in my head. It gets into people branching out of their comfort zones and getting familiar with spices so it can translate to their own cooking.”

A final note: El Salchichero bacon is ++, whether it’s the tasso bacon, apple-cider bacon or bourbon-and-maple bacon.

When I ask LeVeque why it’s a priority to have baller bacon in his shop, he gets a little philosophical. 

“I like good food,”  he says. “That’s basically what it is. I like the feeling of eating good food. I like making good food for people and I like having them be stoked to eat it.

“It changes your mood. It carries you through the day and carries through your life. It’s truly medicine.”

And a true treasure.

El Salchichero is open 11am-7pm Tuesday-Sunday (closed Monday) in the Swift Street Courtyard at 402 Ingalls St. in Santa Cruz. More at (831) 423-6328 or elsalchichero.com.