It’s no baloney that once you’ve tried Arbatskaya, a pork and egg sausage, you’ll ask for more.
Then, there’s Basturma salami made with cognac — chewy and great with wine, cheese and crackers. You can’t get these Old World gourmet sausages at your regular grocery stores. They are made in Mundelein by Alec Mikhaylov, founder and owner of Alef Sausage Inc.
Mikhaylov, an immigrant from Ukraine, makes as many as 40 different kinds of Russian and eastern European-style sausages at a 36,000-square-foot plant where he employs 18 sausage makers he personally trained.
“Everything is natural, nothing is artificial,” said the 63-year-old, wearing a light blue lab coat as he conducted a tour for The News-Sun in his sprawling factory where meats were ground, mixed, the casings filled and then the sausages carried to a room to dry.
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