With Sausage Partners, Kyle Deming plans to contribute yet another chef-run fine food shop to the Leslieville strip

With Sausage Partners, Kyle Deming plans to contribute yet another chef-run fine food shop to the Leslieville strip

The Sausage Partners: Lorraine, Lilly and Kyle Deming (Image: Signe Langford)

First there was the Leslieville Cheese Market, then the Foodist Market, then Hooked, and now Sausage Partners. Leslieville is rapidly becoming the east end’s go-to ’hood for gourmet food shopping, and with many of these places being run by pro chefs, it’s easy to see why. This new meat shop will open in June in the former Inspired Cook space, with Kyle Deming (head chef at Starfish and Ceili Cottage) and his wife Lorraine at the helm. “We’ve been thinking about doing this for a long time,” explains Lorraine, “but we really got the push about two years ago when we made sausages for Patrick [McMurray]’s 40th birthday. Everyone was asking, ‘Where can we buy these?’ So we just kept thinking about it and it feels like the right time now.”

The couple will be working closely with Kawartha Ecological Growers (K.E.G.), buying whole animals from the collective’s farmers and butchering them into prime cuts and sausages with clever names (Naked Pig, Smoked Naked Pig, and, for the one with offal, the Organ Grinder). “We’re not adding a ton of spices. We just want to show off the flavour of the meat,” says Lorraine. Chef Deming, who intends to keep his day jobs, will be experimenting with Mark Trealout of K.E.G. on pre-seasoning the animals. “I’m hoping to feed one pig huge amounts of Kernal Ontario peanuts and see if that enhances the flavour of the pork.”

The shop won’t just be a sausage party, however. Kyle plans to house-smoke salmon and bacon over Ontario and Newfoundland peat, as well as make haggis (the recipe a gift from Stravaigin restaurant in Glasgow, Scotland) and bake Scottish meat pies based on his grandmother’s recipe. Lorraine will be busy stocking shelves with her preserves and pickles—jams made from K.E.G. fruit and her famous Brampton Pickle, a play on the classic British Branston Pickle—many of which are already on the menu at Ceili Cottage.

The pair are also promising a fish counter selling Purdy’s Ontario lake fish, Jim Giggie’s Ocean Wise trout and sustainably farmed halibut from Nova Scotia. Game meats from Ontario Harvest, local veggies and, yes, Deming’s famous sticky toffee pudding will also be on offer.

Sausage Partners, 1378 Queen St East, 647-227-0031, sausagepartners.com.