This Actual Sausage-Fest Attracts 200,000 Pork Obsessives

Shortly after James Bonsall, 26, moved to Cincinnati, he was invited to a house party. "Bring the goetta," the host said over the phone; Bonsall agreed, but then hung up—incredibly confused.

Since he wasn't from the area, he didn't know that goetta was a cased meat with a small cult following (complete with a snappy theme song: Together we will stand. Divided we will fall. Come on now people, get on the ball. Get into goetta. Come on, come on—let's eat some goetta!).

"I ended up bringing some type of cheese instead. Apparently I confused it with 'feta' cheese which I also have little experience with," Bonsall laughed. He's been in the city for two years, and knows better now.

In Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, goetta is a regional specialty. Likely of German-American origin, the breakfast sausage is made of ground pork or a mixture of pork and beef, steel-cut or pinhead oats, and spices. After being cut into squares and fried, it's traditionally served right then with jelly, maple syrup, or apple butter, or turned into an omelet or a GEC (goetta, egg and cheddar) biscuit.

For many, goetta brings back memories of their childhood, such as for Tabitha McClung, 32, a lifelong resident of Cincinnati. "I can definitely recall early memories of Saturday morning breakfasts with my grandpa. We would eat at a little diner out in front of the local flea market. I would always get the goetta, eggs, and toast," McClung said.

She continued: "The goetta would come out on the plate in a rectangle—a slice off the brick they cut it from. If cooked correctly, it's super crispy on the outside, but [with] a softer, creamy center. It's a hard thing to describe to someone who has never experienced it."

People who have moved away from the area have to learn to satisfy their cravings from afar. Judie Nagel' Cook, originally from Cincinnati, has now lived in Arizona for 43 years.

"I have to have the [pinhead] oats brought to me from Cincy, since I make goetta all the time. We all love it, and now my daughter makes it too," Nagel' Cook said. "My parents always made it. The recipe has always been on the bag of pin oats. Sometimes we tweak the recipe some; my daughter likes to put green chiles in hers."

There's enough of a following that for four days every year, thousands of goetta-lovers from all 50 states—in addition to 35 countries—gather at Glier's GoettaFest in celebration of the Cincinnati breakfast staple.

Glier's Goetta, the largest commercial producer of goetta, produces more than 1 million pounds of it annually, around 99 percent of which is consumed locally in Greater Cincinnati.

The company started in 1925, when Bob Glier began working in his family's butcher shop in Newport, Kentucky—right across the bridge from Ohio. After a few decades of doing all sorts of different meats, he and his father realized that goetta was what paid the bills.

Fast-forward to 2001, when current Glier's president Dan Glier, son of Bob, decided that he wanted to hold their first annual GoettaFest.

"Where'd the idea come from? The real reason we started was that we wanted to reward our customers who had been so loyal," Glier said. "We are such a small company that we can't really do traditional coupon marketing, so we decided to hold a party for our customers and see what happened."

That first year, Glier was hoping for a 1,000 to 2,000 individuals. However, as the day progressed, more and more people started to come. Right as the festival was packing out, a storm hit.

"We thought that would make people scatter a bit, but it was actually just enough time for the vendors to be replenished," Glier said. "We ran back to the factory, grabbed everything we possibly could, and brought back enough goetta for the festival to go on." A total of 5,000 visitors made it that first year.

Glier's GoettaFest has now expanded to four days at Newport on the Levee, a large outdoor restaurant and shopping center. This year, 200,000 people are projected to visit.

"Close to 4,000 pounds of goetta is served over the festival," Glier said. "Some vendors serve traditional things like a goetta omelet, but then it gets a little different with goetta-loaded baked potatoes, goetta pizzas, goetta calzones, goetta mac 'n' cheese. We even have a Chinese restaurant that made goetta fried rice for GoettaFest, and it was so popular they put it on their actual menu."

Glier explained that he has a three-two-one rule for his vendors: They can provide three goetta items, two non-goetta items, and one dessert; and no repeats on the goetta-themed items, which really pushes the vendors for creativity. Exhibit A: Goetta brownies, which Glier described as having a goetta-crust on the bottom, brownie on top. Exhibit B: Goetta Goobers—donut holes stuffed with goetta. In total, there are about 40 distinct items using goetta as an ingredient.

For many people though, their celebration of goetta goes beyond the food, and even beyond the festival. For example, the aforementioned Glier's GoettaFest theme song was sent in by an adoring fan.

Glier explained: "Goetta fans tend to be, well, fanatical—these kinds of things just come to us."