On a frosty Wednesday night, Miles Peacock and Mari Inaba found themselves alone in the lot outside Reach Break Brewing. The two business partners seasoned, ground and pumped 30 pounds worth of pork butt into pig intestine casings, twisting them into 6-inch, 1/3-pound sausages inside their green, nondescript, 128-square-foot food cart.
Last weekend, Peacock and Inaba debuted Sasquatch Sausage, the first in a nascent food cart pod forming outside the brewery as part of the new food and drink destination, Astoria Station.
Peacock, an experienced butcher most recently of Gulley’s Butcher Shop in downtown Astoria, said he enjoys the creativity in endless varieties of sausage. He and Inaba met at Gulley’s.
“He kind of taught me how to do it, and we were making sausages and thinking, ‘Wow; these are selling really well, you know. We could probably do a sausage cart,’” Inaba said.
Peacock said he relishes lifting the veil behind how the sausages are made, using locally sourced meats, spices, herbs and other ingredients the pair spend several hours a week grinding up and pumping into their locally sourced intestinal casings.
The menu is minimal to start out. The beer bratwurst, mixed with Reach Break’s India pale ale, comes with sauerkraut cooked down in apple cider with ground caraway seeds and a topping of grilled apples. The pork Korean dog comes topped with sesame-marinated bean sprouts and gochujang, a fermented, spicy Korean condiment. The sausages come served in rolls from Astoria’s Home Bakery.
“Everything I’ve read on food carts is … don’t stretch yourself too thin,” Inaba said. “So while we have a million ideas on different types of sausages, let’s just do a couple and see how that goes, see if people like it.”
The two hope to add bourbon beef, spicy Italian, farro-and-mushroom veggie and breakfast sausages.
“The beauty of it is, we’re not buying cases of premade sausages, so we’ll make a 10-pound batch, and see how it sells, if people like it,” Inaba said. “And we can keep making that 10-pound batch, or we can switch it up and do something else.”
The cart’s hours are loosely based around Reach Break, opening from noon to 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and noon to 6 p.m. Sundays and Mondays. Peacock said he is excited about the developing cluster of businesses sround Astoria Station. “I have total faith that within a year, this is going to be an amazing spot,” he said.
Sasquatch Sausage will soon be joined by Hot Box BBQ, a food cart with two locations in Portland run by Daniel and Abbie Rhoads, who are moving to Astoria.
“I think it’s great,” Daniel Rhoads said of Astoria Station. “It’s kind of like the food carts in Portland are doing, trying to pair with brewers. It’s sort of a restaurant with a variety of choices, a place where people come to gather.”
The cart the couple are bringing has been parked outside Portland’s Base Camp Brewing. The couple is also bringing a catering truck Daniel Rhoads said they had increasingly been driving out to the coast for weddings and other events. He said Hot Box should be open by early March, offering pulled pork, chicken and barbecue tofu dishes.
Charles and Leigh LeMay, who recently relocated to Astoria from Houston, are starting the two-seat Astoria Barber in a 165-square-foot corner storefront at the Astoria Station next to Reveille Ciderworks.
“We’re going to do men’s haircuts and grooming,” Charles LeMay said. “We’ll have a small retail selections of men’s product’s.”
Leigh LeMay, who still helps run a chain of salons in Texas, said there seemed to be a demand for haircuts in Astoria. The two will start building out the storefront next week and hope to open in mid-April.
Claudine Gregory, the widow of late Astoria Station founder Warren Williams, said there will also be a Thai food cart coming to Astoria Station, after which she will see how they do before adding any more. Once everyone is in place, she said, Astoria Station will hold a grand opening to honor Williams.
“This is Warren’s vision,” she said. “I’m just finishing it for him.”