Chef’s Table - No Missing This Link
As a kid, I loved Vienna sausage. As an adult, I rarely meet a sausage I don’t love. Michael Sabeer, president of Tayyib Foods, understands my love affair. Although he’s been Muslim since 1977, Sabeer also loves sausage. His company - “Tayyib” means “good taste” in Arabic - makes halal chicken sausage at a small facility in west Atlanta.
Creative Loafing: I’m a pork sausage purist, but I have to say your sausage is terrific.
Sabeer: There’s no pork allowed in this building. We have a saying: “Save the hogs.” I took some of my sausage to Sara Lee - they make Jimmy Dean. Four vice presidents were licking their fingers. When we do demos in grocery stores, people flip. For a truly unique, lasting experience consuming sausage, ours is the best on God’s beautiful earth.
Why does so much sausage taste so lousy?
So much of it is garbage, it’s just awful. Originally it was a way to get rid of leftover meat. We only use chicken thighs and all natural spices that cause the flavor to hit the tongue.
How’d you get into sausage making?
I used to be a short order cook, but I went into the business to provide halal food for my family. I took some halal chicken wings to a customer and he said I ought to make sausage. That was 17, 18 years ago.
What does “halal” mean?
“Halal” means it is “Islamically acceptable.” The free-roaming chicken is from Gainesville; it’s raised on grain and no steroids. When the chicken’s life is taken, we say God’s name over it and then it is bled properly.
Besides Muslims, who eats your sausage?
Number one, it’s sausage eaters, people who love sausage. Two, it’s people who don’t eat red meat. Three, it’s Muslims and Jews who observe kosher. We use kosher casing. Our chicken and our casing is very, very expensive, but our sausage is not.
You sell at retail under the African Brand as well as at local restaurants.
We sell to Kroger and Publix and some stores we private label for. As far as restaurants, we have Q-Time, Crescent Moon, Thumbs Up, Gladys Knight and Ron Winan’s Chicken and Waffles, the Flying Biscuit. The Beautiful Restaurant sells 2,000 pounds of our sausage a month.