Trestle on Tenth’s Gluttony Fest

While most New Yorkers huddled in front of televisions Sunday night to watch the Giants beat the Packers, a few friends and I gathered at Manhattan's Trestle on Tenth to celebrate another kind of slaughter (albeit one that also involved passing pig skin): Metzgete. This hefty Swiss dinner of fresh pork sausages is traditionally served soon after hogs are butchered for the winter. For five days last week, Trestle’s Swiss-born chef Ralf Kuettel offered a feast of unctuous blood sausage, rich liver sausage, juicy brats and luscious braised pork belly served family-style with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut. To help our bellies grapple with our immense dinner, the generous server brought us glasses of chef Kuettel’s Chartreuse-style, house-made bitters.  The lightly sweet, chamomile-scented digestif was so immediately soothing and pleasantly tongue-numbing that by the end of the night, I started to look forward to next year’s Metzgete.