Rosamunde Roundtable

Today, Rosamunde Sausage Grill opened its new location at Mission south o’ 24th. Diverse experiences dictate diverse format: three sausages, three opinions.

Jen Gann: I got really anxious while waiting to order at the new Rosamunde location. Maybe it’s because the huge space allows for too many competing possibilities to swoop in. Finally, I decided on the Chicken Cherry sausage. I like sweet and savory. Unfortunately, I think I picked the wrong accompaniments. While the hot peppers were good (what hot peppers aren’t?), the grilled onions were somehow ill-defined and flat. The sausage itself was much better, with a pleasing texture and tasty bits of cherry. The toasted bun ruled. I regretted not ordering a beer but luckily, someone was nice enough to let me take a few sips (or a lot) of his.

David Cole: Great hopes! Great hopes of mine were dashed on this — this most wet of MLKJDs. The culprit: weisswurst with grilled onions; and an accomplice: potato salad. I ignored their veal’s reputation (mainly because I found out about its reputation after I finished eating). I am generally a fan of the stuff but my sausage had little flavor and the grilled onions were (as previously alluded to) unmanageably large and similarly flavorless. Okay, but potato salad is an easy victory for me. What! Filled with rubbery bacon and eerily slimy, Rosamunde’s potato salad was similarly disappointing. I’m convinced I would enjoy a different order and I plan to find out in the near future. Plusses: lots of seating, beers, beers, beers.

Tag Savage: Pork is a pretty reliable meat. It’s sweet and vaguely tropical and stands up to rough treatment. Unadventurous, then, I got the Hungarian sausage. It is smoked. It was snappy and butch. The buns at Rosamunde have a nice open crumb to them, and they are rigid enough to handle the heft of your meat but spongy enough to allow gobbling. Perhaps you can tell: I am a violent eater. I know well enough to skip the grilled onions at Rosamunde—they are slippery and bland—but the sauerkraut, which is oddly dry but still vivid and tangy, was as good as I remember. And yeah, the hot pepper mix is surprising in a sort of old-world way. Chunks of carrot and celery in it. It’s almost a brothless soup.

The new location feels like Cancun turned 90 degrees, a bunch of picnic tables crammed too close, forcing you to drop scarves and things into your neighbors’ food, forcing you to bang your butt into your neighbors’ heads every time you stand. Under certain circumstances this will feel convivial. There is also a table made from very large tree stump. It is very low to the ground, which means a long treacherous journey for your sausage as it travels from the tray to your mouth. Certainly pants are going to get ruined.

There is also a bar. The bar has bunches of beer and bunches of wine. The introduction of wine means that your can bring you mom. As of today, it was a more tolerable, if less novel, experience than the Toronado-annex situation in the Lower Haight. There are big windows and the light that comes through them is cottony and appetite-making. Toronado, by contrast, has a putrid bluish light that I wish they would do something about. I had a Damnation ale from Russian River Brewing. It was hella ripe, tasted like licking pear pulp from between someone’s very clean fingers. Not bad. Didn’t really go with my sausage, by that’s no one’s fault but my own.

Photography courtesy of Amandine Circumflex.

10 Responses to “Rosamunde Roundtable”

  1. Allan says:

    So I love slippery, bland grilled onions. What of it?

  2. Alex says:

    I’ll have one of each. Beer and sausage, that is. Extra jalapenos, while your at it.

  3. throughtheunknown says:

    I went to check out the new place around 6:30 and it was jam packed with people, which was fine because everyone was in a good mood. My friends and I ordered sausages, beer and fries. I had the weisswurst with the chili and sweet peppers–which is my favorite combination so far and a Stella. The beer was fine and the sausage and chili were great as usual. However, I was disappointed in the fries; they obviously weren’t fresh cut and were over salted. If they had some potato wedges instead they would go really well with everything.

    Still, I really enjoyed the new place and plan on going back soon. I just hope the fries get better, or they at least ease up on the salt. (I was actually excited to see that they had added fries to the menu because in the past I often found that while one sausage wasn’t enough, two was too much, and a bag of chips hardly did anything to fill me up. I always thought fries would be the perfect addition.)

    • Cranky Old Mission Guy says:

      Fries with hot dogs (or sausages, if you prefer) are just plain wrong. If you want something extra, get a pickle, or slaw, or, best yet, go with a partner, order an experiment dog, cut it half and share your thoughts.

  4. Sausage Fan says:

    Dude. I don’t know what kind of problem your reviewers have with delicious sausages. Because I went last night and was basically in heaven. The onions are exactly like the onions at Lower Haight: delicious. The tables are close, but close in a communal dining, sausage pub, lets all together revel in the delicious meats we are consuming kind of way. Also, there are like 25 BEERS ON TAP! Not just any kind of beer, 25 beers that includes delicious and unique beers! Like Alagash White! Like some sort of crazy german hefeweizen with a 7 syllable name! Also, they have like 500 million bottled beers!

    Also, they serve all their beers in the correct glasses!

    Also, they have added baked beans to their menu!

    Also, there is a sausage wrapped in bacon!

    Also, they are serving the most delicious sausage breakfast sandwich I have ever had in my life. Yes! I went here twice within 12 hours. What?

    Basically, there are so many wonderful things about this little bubble of heaven on Mission Street I can’t even list them all and am floored that your reviewers were not swept up in the glory of it all. Totally floored. I demand a re-review. By people that like sausage and beer and onions and appreciate 25 beers on tap served in their appropriate glassware.

  5. Hey, how come no one made fun of this excerpt???: “…rigid enough to handle the heft of your meat but spongy enough to allow gobbling.”

    Step it up, commenters.

  6. Cranky Old Mission Guy says:

    Ate there today. As far as I can tell from one weisewurst with kraut and sweet peppers, and a spicy Canadian ale with lots of alcohol, the only part of the experience that was inferior to the Rosamunde/Toronado experience was the music — Toronado has WAAAAAY better sounds on an actual jukebox. I don’t even know what the word “trip-hop” means, but if I had to guess, I would guess it meant the crap they were listening to at the new Rosamunde. Doesn’t matter. Great food, great beer.

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  8. Jeffrey D. says:

    The brunch sucks big time. Where should I begin…
    On a recent Saturday noon trip I ordered the Country Sausage Hash and an order of French Toast.
    The small portions were a blessing in disguise. The toast was literally burnt black to a crisp, hard and cold. The strawberry decorating the plate was dry and generally nasty looking. The eggs were runny and gross. The French Toast were 4 globs of I-don’t-know-what. I guess it was bread dipped in batter, but no resemblance of edible food. The coffee tasted like it had been sitting a few hours.
    The service was mediocre: the employees were grouchy.
    In general, the quality of the food here is a step above fast food, except the prices are not.
    If you want to eat brunch, do yourself a favor and walk a few yards to the corner of 25th and Mission to the Red Cafe. They are the bomb, and much cheaper to boot.
    I will NEVER be back!