{"id":1042781,"date":"2018-12-09T01:18:35","date_gmt":"2018-12-09T06:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bocskairadio.org\/?p=1042781"},"modified":"2018-12-09T01:18:35","modified_gmt":"2018-12-09T06:18:35","slug":"dohar-meats-bacon-hurka-head-cheese-back-at-clevelands-west-side-market-recipes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bocskairadio.org\/en\/dohar-meats-bacon-hurka-head-cheese-back-at-clevelands-west-side-market-recipes\/","title":{"rendered":"Dohar Meats’ bacon, hurka, head cheese back at Cleveland’s West Side Market (recipes)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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CLEVELAND, Ohio — The hurka is back, and so is the head cheese.<\/p>\n

Dohar Meats, an ethnic cornerstone of West Side Market in Cleveland\u2019s traditional food hall, has a working smokehouse once again.<\/p>\n

Let the cured meat hallelujiahs begin, especially in a bacon-loving era. And if your first language is Hungarian, say it even louder. This small family business has kept food memories alive for generations since World War II, when, for many, a well-garlicked, paprika-tinted morsel of smoked meat helped confirm identity and keep misery away.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mike and Angela Szucs photographed in their second store, a new shop in Parma. (Photo by Lisa DeJong\/The Plain Dealer)<\/div>\n
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It\u2019s been almost two years since this pocket of Cleveland\u2019s eastern European culture and darling of famous foodies produced its own product. Dohar owner Miklos \u201cMike\u201d Szucs (pronounced\u00a0<\/em>\u201czooch\u201d<\/em>) worked a kitchen for decades a few blocks from West Side Market, on Bridge Avenue. But when he decided it was time to move to a larger place, he temporarily stocked his stand with other products he admired. Then he shut down the Bridge Avenue site to build a new production facility in Parma, which included a retail shop. This would give him one foot in the historic market, another in his customer core in the suburbs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mike Szucs in 1988, when he used to grind sausage meat at the stand. (Photo courtesy Szucs Family)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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But building quickly became a slow grind. Turns out, the new Parma property had to be gutted, down to a freshly dug foundation. Szucs, a mighty looking figure, faced thyroid-related health problems, which took him out of commission for eight months. Then, even after construction was complete and his health improved, his back went out, the smoker broke and the mixer needed a hard-to-find part.<\/p>\n

In the fall, Szucs was trying not to fret.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got a four-page list of people to notify when I\u2019m operating again,\u201d he said. At last report, the Parma shop won\u2019t open until mid-January, although the West Side Market stand is now fully stocked.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Smoked baby back ribs hang at the new Dohar Meats location in Parma. (Photo by Lisa DeJong\/The Plain Dealer)<\/div>\n
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Chances are, Dohar Meats can pull off a second act. Szucs is one of only a few market vendors who still smokes his own meats, and the stand he runs is a favorite among Northeast Ohio\u2019s Eastern European community, especially the post-war wave of Hungarian immigrants that poured into Cleveland in the 1940s.<\/p>\n

But this is more than an ethnic homecoming. In the past, Dohar products have been on the menu at Great Lakes Brewing Company, Jonathon Sawyer\u2019s former Noodlecat stand at the market and at the annual spring Paprika benefits by Ritz-Carlton Cleveland chef Richard Arnoldi.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe now look forward to incorporating Dohar meats into the TURN Bar + Kitchen menu,\u201d Arnoldi said of the Ritz property.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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World famous chef Ferran Adria tried samples during a 2014 tour of the market with Cleveland chef Jonathon Sawyer. (Photo by Marvin Fong\/The Plain Dealer)<\/div>\n
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\u201cLove Dohars!,\u201d Sawyer said through a spokeswoman. \u201cThrough the generations of paprika and pork belly, they crafted a true Cleveland treasure at West Side Market.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Patrick Conway, co-founder of Great Lakes, a nearby brewery now 30 years old, said in a phone interview: \u201cDohar\u2019s products have always been exceptional. I think It\u2019s critical for the market to really embrace the local, organic, seasonal food that Cleveland\u2019s culinary scene has embraced.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Paprika-tinted hot Hungarian smoked sausage, a Dohar signture. (Photo by Lisa DeJong\/The Plain Dealer)<\/div>\n
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After \u201cBizarre Foods\u201d TV host Andrew Zimmern worked his way through the market for an episode in 2013, and ate several samples from Dohar, he dubbed Cleveland \u201cthe city of sausage-eaters.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Szucs smokes 300 pounds of sausage at a time. (Photo by Lisa DeJong\/The Plain Dealer)<\/div>\n
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The history of the Dohar stand is as intriguing as a slice of head cheese, that shimmering cold cut assembled from pig bits (cheeks, tongue, etc.) seasoned and cooked together, then cured with its gelatinous juices in a casing. It\u2019s an Old World method of cooking, a way to preserve the remains of annual butchering \u2013 although Szucs insists that they are not leftovers but the tastiest parts of the animal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Key players in Hungarian sausage at West Side Market: Emery Lovaszy, left, and Steve Dohar. (Photos by John Szilagyi, courtesy Szilagyi family.)<\/div>\n
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The stand was started by an earlier Hungarian immigrant, Emery Lovaszy, who began his first job there at the age of 11 and later ran his own stand for more than 40 years. In many 18-hour solo workdays, Lovaszy mostly made fresh sausage, according to Szucs, and it was Szucs\u2019 father-in-law, Steve Dohar, who joined Lovaszy in the 1950s and turned the emphasis to smoked meats.<\/p>\n

Dohar knew well the Hungarian flavor palette and how to replicate it.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how Szucs tells the story: Dohar escaped the Russian occupation of Hungary by bicycle, boldly pedaling past enemy troops marching his captured countrymen in the opposite direction. He made it to a refugee camp in Austria and got work at a local butcher. Because the refugees were not allowed salaried jobs at the time, he traded his labor for hogs, rented the shop a few days a week, and then used his country-boy skills to make sausage and other smoked meats for sale in the camp.<\/p>\n

It was a lasting connection with an audience.<\/p>\n

\u201cThroughout the years,\u201d said Szucs, \u201csome of our customers at West Side Market were people who had been in that camp.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mike Szucs, center, and his wife Angela Dohar Szucs, at their stand in 2005. (Photo by Roadell Hickman\/The Plain Dealer)<\/div>\n
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Head cheese is not Dohar Meats\u2019 biggest seller these days. Neither is the hurka (rice and liver sausage) made with blood, or without. But Szucs knows he has to have it on hand for his oldest and most devoted customers. Under a sign with a pig caricature and bold lettering for the word \u201cgarlic,\u201d he does a brisk business in the smoked and double-smoked sausages and bacon, cottage hams and in some of the leaner beef products he created, including smoked cuts of brisket and eye of the round.<\/div>\n
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Balancing inventory is an art form since, Szucs said, he uses only fresh meat in his product and never sells anything that has been frozen. For years, this was an easier calculation, with a steady audience. But the aging of that audience, and the past few years of parking problems around the market made him consider the second location in the hope of a steadier audience. The city has expanded some parking since then.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Angela Szucs and her son Nick as a young boy. (Photo courtesy Szucs Family)<\/div>\n
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\u201cWe are more than a little proud of this,\u201d Szucs said, standing amid sanitary-white walls in his Parma shop. \u201cBut we will never leave the market. My wife won\u2019t let me, anyway.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Szucs is married to the former Angela Dohar, Steve\u2019s daughter. Their son, Nicholas, started out in business school and then turned to nursing, and now works at UH Ahuja Medical Center. With his wife, Jamael, and two children, Nick said he wanted something steadier than sausage-making. His father is keeping an eye out for a future successor.<\/p>\n

But not immediately.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Nicholas Szucs, in red ballcap, was one of many young workers at the stand. (Photo courtesy Szucs Family)<\/div>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m not going anywhere anytime soon,\u201d says Szucs, 57.<\/div>\n
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Moving production to a new location felt enormous in many ways, said Szucs, including a new layer of applications for health licenses that will allow him to make product in Parma and sell at his stand in Cleveland. It limits the amount he can sell in bulk, but that\u2019s not what he\u2019s after, anyway. He loves that semi-regular customers will stop in from New York, Florida and Columbus.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mike slices some of his double-smoked bacon, which he makes in small batches. (Photo by Lisa DeJong\/The Plain Dealer)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cI like retail,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a whole different ballgame. You have contact with the customers. You get feedback from them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people buy a 16-pound ham that feeds 25-35 people and put it on their holiday table, it\u2019s got to be good or you can ruin their holiday. When people come back happy, it makes me feel happy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Angela Dohar and her dad, Steve, at the stand. He turned the empasis to smoked meats. (Photo courtesy Szucs Family)<\/div>\n
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