Omnivore - A visit to the Spotted Trotter

Artisan charcuterie in Kirkwood

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As I noted last week, many times on weekends I long for a place to go, sip good wine, and eat charcuterie. But because that place doesn’t exist close to my house, I decided to try to create the experience for myself in my yard. But first I had to find the charcuterie.

Luckily, the Spotted Trotter has set up shop quite close to me, in Kirkwood. The Trotter’s owner Kevin Outz has been a familiar sight at the Peachtree Road Farmer’s Market for the past couple of years, and his retail location opened in November. Our former freelancer Jennifer Zyman was one of the first to discover Outz at the farmer’s market, and she wrote a Food Finds column about the Spotted Trotter back in 2010.

So we went to the Spotted Trotter and composed our own meat and cheese plate: Toscano salami, pate campagne, chicken liver pate, and two huge chunks of cheese. We grabbed an H&F baguette, as well as six pork belly and rabbit crepinettes for dinner later in the week.

I have to say, the charcuterie is some of the best I’ve had, particularly the salami. The Toscano is made with a coarser grind on the meats, and as a result there are pretty big hunks of fat in there, but they melt away into the chewy, tangy jumble of the thing, leaving a pleasant coating on the tongue. I also loved both pates, particularly the campagne, which tasted hearty and foresty. The cheeses were both great as well - I’m now officially obsessed with the Ellington from Looking Glass Creamery in Asheville, a goat cheese with an ash rind that has a dense, smooth interior with a flavor that lasts and lasts on the palate.

Spotted Trotter’s meats are not cheap - the picnic pictured cost about $60. But we did have enough left over to have pre-dinner cheese one night, as well as a couple of breakfasts of chicken liver pate on toast (possibly my favorite breakfast of all time), plus salami to snack on throughout the week.