OBERTO SAUSAGE COMPANY FACTORY OUTLET 1715 Rainier S., 322-7524 www.oberto.com open every day till 6 p.m.
You’ve probably passed the red, white, and green Oberto Sausage Company Factory Outlet on Rainier a thousand times and either: (a) written it off as a wholesale jerky outlet for hydro-race-watching, domestic-beer-drinking white guys, or (b) said to yourself, “I should stop in there sometime and check it out,” which, of course, you know you’ll never do.
Being the brave yet appropriately submissive interns we are, we trudged over and checked it out for you. Truth is, the trudge isn’t as bad as you’d think (a 15-minute bus ride from downtown), and the outlet itself is a diamond in the Rainier rough. Of course you can buy 100 pounds of sausage there, and, yes, they sell bumper stickers reminding you to “Have fun NOW!” but what’s really special about this place is its lunch menu—fast, cheap, damn good food. Really damn good. And not a salad in sight.
They serve meat—meat on a bun or meat on a slice. Your choice. You can’t mess up. The sausages ($1.49)—kielbasa, Polish, German, moderately spicy hot links—rotate dozens at a time side by side, their fat-juice glistening in the fluorescent light, making your stomach grumble in cholesterol-loving anticipation. Next to the rotisserie, a large man with the best voice in the world hums as he stacks sandwiches ($3.50) a story high with meat (corned beef, pastrami, turkey, salami), cheese, sauerkraut, meat, mustard, pickles, and meat—enough meat to make your eyes pop out like a cartoon character. A bag of Tim’s chips and a soda complete the meal.
The service is friendly and good, as is the mainly working-class clientele. There’s no place to sit and hardly a place to stand, but this is the outlet’s charm—it’s not a place where everybody knows your name or a place for long meals with good company. This is a place to get food and get back to work. And it’s well worth the trudge.
Perhaps there’s somewhere obscure to eat that you’ve been meaning to check out for a long time. Let us know and we’ll SEND THE INTERNS! E-mail food@seattleweekly.com or write SEND THE INTERNS, care of this paper.
