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Loukaniko is commonly a lamb and pork sausage flavored with fennel and orange peel, which gives it a bright citrusy aroma. The scholars at Wikipedia claim there are linguistic relationships to Portuguese linguica, Spanish longaniza, and Bulgarian lukanka, though I don’t see many similarities as far as spicing and texture go. It shows up on the menu at some other Greek restaurants around town, including the relatively new Mythos in Lincoln Square, which has a pretty good one. The other night at Nia, I had a terrific house-made version with their sausage sampler (big ups to the morcilla too). I began to wonder why such a seemingly popular sausage wasn’t available in stores right next to the brats, Polishes, and Italians.
Olympic Meat Packing is a relic in the market district, a tiny Greek butcher shop with all the custom carving and flexibility that entails. I called them on a good day last week — they’d just made a fresh batch of loukaniko and told me I could have as much as I wanted. When I arrived, owner George Tsoukas disappeared into the back, where whole lamb carcasses hung waiting for their turn under the knife. He emerged with a plastic tub filled with a single rope of sausage, pulled out a length and asked me where to cut. When he told me he supplied loukaniko not only to Athens, but to many restaurants including Pegasus, Santorini, and Lincolnwood’s Psistaria, I figured I’d found the missing link (ouch).
If you have a good source for loukaniko, please let me know.
