“I work almost exclusively with Nicky USA for my meats—and their customer service is the best in the business,” Rucker says of this purveyor of buffalo, Oregon lamb and other rare meats.

Gabriel RuckerLe Pigeon 738 E. Burnside St. Portland, Oregon 503-546-8796

Game On:
Nicky's Serves Up the Other End of the Sausage

Buying sausage is a daunting prospect, especially in a supermarket. Sure things have improved a bit over the past decade in regards to selection and quality, but for many, sausage is still, more or less, mystery meat. Tidy casings of animal product (and byproduct) loaded with an unknowable blend of sodium, animal protein, and stuff. Most of which, from a cursory glance, is all made from chicken (chicken apple sausage, chicken with spinach and feta, chicken with roasted pepper and corn, etc), which is more or less a blank slate meat for all of the other embellishments stuffed into a sausage. Now I am not necessarily complaining, but if you are going to eat sausage, why not make it far more interesting?

Nicky Farms specializing in all manner of wild game; their product list reads more like a zoo map than a menu. Rabbit, alligator, buffalo, and emu are part of the menagerie that have attracted professional chefs to Nicky Farm's livestock – also known as "game." Most pedestrian eaters tend to shy away from game, as it is altogether too unfamiliar and, some would say, "gamey." This is a shame (although there is no accounting for taste) but Nicky Farms, besides their dizzying array of frozen and packaged game, makes a pretty remarkable sausage.

Nicky's Elk Sausage with Wild Huckleberries and Pinot Noir (the pinot noir is mixed in to the sausage, not served alongside in a wine glass) is somewhat of a sausage revelation. Sure it is somewhat "gamey" in flavor, with meat that is darker and more nuanced than what you might be used to, but the near herbal qualities of the meat mixed with the huckleberries (kind of like a milder blueberry in flavor) and the wine provided an experience that was akin to eating a forest (in a good way). The sausages are tender and generous in size, and with most sausages, the taste is far superior when grilled.

Nicky Farms is a Portland, Oregon based company specializing in the distribution of game birds and meats to chefs, and meat enthusiasts around the country. Their sausages, as well as their many other meat products, are available online and in specialty butchers around the country.

Introducing Nicky Farms - Elevate Your Meat Repertoire

From a group of family owned sustainable farms and ranches across the Northwest comes the finest offering of natural game birds and animals produced anywhere. Nicky Farms is focused on bringing chefs and epicureans authentically American meats like rabbit, quail, fallow venison, Northwest elk and free roaming bison (buffalo).

2009 Wild About Game Award-winning Chefs
1st Place – David Kreifels and Will Cisa, Laurelhurst Market, Portland, OR – Chard wrapped Rabbit Saddle and sausage stuffed hindquarter with Viridian terbais beans and a salmis sauce 2nd Place – Philip Oswalt, Multnomah Athletic Club - Roasted Venison Rack, matsutake and venison liver hash in a sherry reduction. 3rd Place – Gabriel Rucker, Le Pigeon, Portland, OR – Buffalo Heart and Onion Pierogi with seared liver, figs, chestnuts and brown butter.
2009 Wild About Game Cook-Off Chefs:
Paul Bosch, the Resort at the Mountain, Welches, OR Matt Christianson, Urban Farmer, Portland Joseba Jiménez de Jiménez, Harvest Vine, Seattle Erol Kanmaz, Timberline Lodge, OR David Kreifels, Laurelhurst Market, Portland	Tony Meyers, Serrato, Portland Phil Oswalt, Multnomah Athletic Club, Portland Gabriel Rucker, Le Pigeon, Portland Pascal Sauton, Carafe, Portland Karl Zenk, The Heathman Restaurant and Bar, Portland