You had me at bratwurst.
This is the first of many work trips to San Jose, and I have this personal flaw of needing to eat a few times a day. While this causes periodic inconvenience to my daily agenda it also opens up my life to establishments that sell food. That’s where Original Gravity comes into the picture. I was starving, they had food, it was a perfect marriage.
I ate fries while I was there, but let me start with the most impressive part of the night. The OG Sausage was perfection in a bun. Their sausage menu has a lot of inspiring options, but the house-made OG with brisket, pork, bacon, cheddar, horseradish, and spices seemed like the obvious choice. I topped it off with sauerkraut and candied jalapeños. The sausage was perfectly cooked, full of cheesy/pork flavors, and the candied jalapeños had enough sweetness to balance the salt, heat, and spice. Would definitely devour again.
I also ordered fries. I tried both the regular duck fat fries and the green peppercorn gravy poutine. This is hard because I enjoyed the sausage so much, but the fries were not nearly the draw that I thought they would be. It’s possible that I caught them on an off night, but the duck fat fries were extremely average.
The fries themselves were crispy enough, but they didn’t have a lot of flavor. I’ve had duck fat fries before, but usually they’re infused with some truffle or herbs. You want to know a secret about duck fat fries? 95% of the time they’re not actually fried in duck fat. They’re fried in regular oil and then tossed in melted duck fat. It’s essentially a flavoring that’s supposed to add depth and richness. With these fries it just diminished the texture. The wasabi mayo was nice, and the fries were definitely edible, but they weren’t more than a 6 out of 10 on my rating scale.
The Green Peppercorn Gravy Poutine was a bit better. The cheese curds weren’t whole curds, but rather lightly chopped curd pieces. They were big enough to maintain a bit of a squeak, but small enough to incorporate into almost every bite. The gravy could have been more interesting. The idea of green peppercorn is great, but with so many interesting grilled meat combinations from the sausages you’d think that it would have a more complex base. Green peppercorn was really the only flavor I could pick out, and it was thinner than I thought it would be. The fries didn’t fare any better under the gravy than they did on their own. I don’t regret eating them, but I wouldn’t go higher than 6.5 out of 10 on the rating scale.
Bottom line, the Original Gravity is great. You should check it out. The beer selection was very impressive, and the employees seemed incredibly approachable about chatting with customers about the line-up.
Catalog:
Sampled on 3/20/2018
The Sodafry 