Sad City Tries A Blood Sausage

Blood sausage is one of those foods that not only has a disgusting name, but it's also gross to look at. To further complicate matters, blood sausage is not only a disgusting title for food, it precisely describes what it is, and the idea of eating a sausage of blood is kind of a turn off. Also if, like us, you have seen the "how blood sausage is made" segment on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations you might be further turned off.

Despite the gross name and appearance, we've heard people rave about the blood sausage and with the Dominican place at El Mercado serving it up, we knew the time to try it had come.

A Very Odd Vending Machine

If we know one thing, it's that the older we get the more diminished our already minimal grasp on pop culture becomes. Who's a popular music artist these days? Beyond Lady Gaga, we really couldn't tell you. Twilight or Hunger Games? We've still never even seen American Idol. Beavis & Butthead? We remember when the original incarnation debuted. It just seems like one of those things, the older we get, the less we know about pop culture.

 Recently we stumbled upon another bizarre part of pop culture in this vending machine for Bok Choy Boy (series 2!) toys in El Mercado. All we know is that Bok Choy is some sort of Chinese vegetable. Kind of looks like a cross between Mega Man and Kenny from South Park to us. Is this the latest toy craze sweeping the country? A random one-off machine? It's all a mystery here at Sad City.

The Strange Saga Of The El Mercado Jags Jersey

Fans of Sad City know that we love the El Mercado grocer and often frequent the various dining establishments within. Over the course of the last year and a half there has been one thing inside the El Mercado that has endlessly confounded us. One store in the market sells various non-food wares. The vendor sells t-shirts, cell phone cases, sunglasses, mini flags and religious paraphernalia. There is also a handful of futbol (soccer to us) team jerseys for sale. Makes sense, since soccer is, by a wide margin, the most popular sport just about everywhere in the world except the United States.

Another El Mercado Gem

Last week when we wrote about our travels to Philly and the awesomeness of the Reading Terminal Market, we opined that every city should be so lucky to have such an incredible market. While it has been well documented that Sad City is a huge fan of El Mercado on Park Street, we aren't going to get all Hartford cheerleader silly and claim that El Mercado is anywhere on par with the Reading Terminal Market, but it's adding more great restaurants and is really a great place to get Latino food.

While most of our dining at El Mercado has been at the Mexican restaurant with the occasional stop at the Dominican restaurant, we had noticed that El Mercado has added a Peruvian and Columbian restaurant. This weekend we tried out the fairly new Peruvian restaurant Autentico Sabor Peruano (Authentic Peruvian Flavor). It's an impressive and varied menu but one item in particular made our decision a no-brainer; ceviche.