Pick (brand) Salami

Joy of joys, I finally found some actual Hungarian Pick salami being sold here in Chicagoland. I came across it, quite by accident, at the Brookhaven market just off Cass and Plainfield. They carried three varieties: Rakoczi, téli (winter), and paprika. Their paprika salami was one of my dietary staples when I lived back there, and I've never found any sausage here to be an adequate substitute.

(By the way, that was my first venture into Brookhaven, and I was thrilled by the geographical representation of food and drink there. I'm used to Polish delis, of which there is plenty of stock crossover, but I've never seen quite that exact representation of foodstuffs and drinks there. It's a lot heavier on the Lithuanian, Romanian, and Balkan foods. I was especially impressed by the extensive selection of ajvars and slivovitzes. I love slivovica and I've never seen that extensive a selection anywhere in Chicago. There must have been at least ten different brands, if not fifteen. Plus many Baltic beers--some of which I've seen elsewhere, but many I have not--as well as a wide range of the Russian Baltika beers. Also, the chocolate-covered cheesecurd candy bars in the refrigerated sections. Several brands [mostly Lithuanian--no Hungarian Turo Rudi, though] and different flavors. One of my favorite sweet treats, and I'm not one for sweets usually.)

Now, have I just not been paying close attention or is Pick salami available elsewhere in the area? I've only seen the Bende Hungarian brand salami and, while a reasonable simulacrum of Pick and Herz sausages, it's not quite the same thing. So, has anyone seen either Pick or Herz salamis anywhere else?

Whoa! Quite a find. I've never seen it anywhere else, but admittedly my knowledge of north/west shopping is limited. I had a heckuva a lunch at the Pick store in Buda last year and bought tons of cold cuts from them while I was in Budapest. I need to post the photos...as well as a shit ton from Budapest and Hungary in general. Thanks for the inspiration!

BTW, I really like Bende's salamis and sausages (kolbasz). The spicy version of the latter, after air drying properly at home, is one of my favorite things to eat with good bread and sliced red peppers.

Price was pretty reasonable, too. $9.99 for 400g of the paprikas szalami, and I believe the two others were $12.99. I'm already 2/3 of the way through the paprikas szalami. I've always been a big fan of this particular kind of salami. It's got a much grainier texture--it doesn't have that typical glossy sheen you get with a good téli salami, but, for whatever reason, I've always preferred it. Whenever I would go on road trips, I'd pack a lunch of Hungarian zsemle (buns/rolls--pillowy soft on the inside, but with a thin, flaky, crispy crust, with a wafer-like texture. They go stale pretty fast, though. The morning's rolls were usually chewy and the crust loses all its crunchiness by the evening.), paprikas szalami or paprikas kolbasz (so far as I can tell, the same thing except packed into regular sausage-sized casings), and a few Hungarian hot peppers (basically, Hungarian wax peppers, but a bit different than what you get here under that name.) I would never get tired of that lunch.

I saw at least one Pick brand Hungarian salami at Fresh Farms Niles this afternoon. I'm sorry that I didn't get a chance to get more info as to type of sausage. There is a row of different sorts of Hungarian sausages in one of the cases across from their amazing deli counter. Most seemed to be Hungarian brand. Perhaps someone else who knows more than I do about the subject can study what is available there.

Thanks for the lead. I'll be up in Evanston on Wednesday, so I'll try to remember to swing west into Niles and check it out. My salami is almost all gone already!

OK, I checked it out, and Fresh Farm Niles sells the smaller 250g Pick salamis for $7.79. I only saw one kind, and that was the standard Pick salami (which I believe is the same as téli salami. What I called téli salami upthread may just have been labeled as salami with no other modifier.) All the other Hungarian salami varieties were domestic brands. So that's another place to remember if you're looking for imported Hungarian salami, although it doesn't have the selection of Brookhaven.