Green's Sausage House

Jerome Green ground sausage to his family's Czech recipe behind a Zabcikville general store in 1946, and his sons Charles and Marvin are still in the business.1

Why go

The house specialty is a kraut sausage burger, a grilled sausage patty on a bun with mustard, pickles, onions and sauerkraut.1 Michael Barr ate one for Texas Highways and wrote down what it did: The fermented tang of the sauerkraut perfectly complements the sweet and salty flavor of the pork, and the bitter notes of the dark beer play well with the strong personality of the sandwich.1 The family moved across the highway in 1960 into the building that now holds the cafe, the bakery, the meat market and a deer-processing room.1 Charles Green on the method, verbatim: We listen to people and offer the best product we can.1 The market case in 2017 held more than twenty sausage varieties, six bacons and six cheeses.1

Order this / avoid

Order: the sausage burger. The house calls it a Green's original and puts it at the top of its own board.2
Order: the sausage and sauerkraut plate, but only on a Friday or a Saturday at lunch. That is the whole window.2
Order: kolaches on the way out. Barr counted fourteen fillings in the case and took a cream cheese one, which he called moist and delicate and buttery sweet.1
Avoid: treating the 2017 prices as today's. Barr's burger was $4.79 nine years ago and nobody has published a current board.1

What locals & experts say

Michael Barr, Texas Highways, 14 July 2017: The fermented tang of the sauerkraut perfectly complements the sweet and salty flavor of the pork, and the bitter notes of the dark beer play well with the strong personality of the sandwich.1
David Anderson of Lake Belton, quoted by Barr in the same piece: This place is special. Not many places like this are left. The food is real. The people are real. There are no phonies here. That's why I keep coming back.1
Marvin Green, on how the family runs it: When you focus on quality, everything else takes care of itself.1

Good to know

It is not in Temple. Zabcikville sits ten miles east on State Highway 53, surrounded by grain silos and cornfields.1
The restaurant shuts before the market does, by half an hour, so a late lunch can still get you sausage to take home.1
The case is bigger than the feature says. The market now advertises thirty-one sausages, six bacons and twenty cheeses, against the twenty-plus and six-and-six Barr wrote down in 2017.2
They process your deer. Drop-off and pick-up run in normal business hours and the animal has to arrive skinned.2
The founding has four names, not two. The family's own page puts Jerry and Clara Beran alongside Jerome and Della Green in 1946.2

Verdict

should-visit — A Czech recipe that came over with a family, went into a general store in 1946 and is still being ground by the founders' sons is the whole argument, and Michael Barr's line about the sauerkraut cutting the pork is a writer telling you what the sandwich tastes like. The market backs the kitchen: bacon in six cures, bread baked on site, a kolache case with fourteen fillings. It sits ten miles out of Temple on a state highway with grain silos around it, so this is a drive you make on purpose.

Green's Sausage House.