Kowalski Sausage
Our Take
If you grew up around here, you grew up on Kowalski. Polish immigrants Zygmund and Agnes Kowalski started with a little grocery and smokehouse on Detroit’s Chene Street in the early 1900s, turning out kielbasa, hot dogs, and liver sausage by hand. Demand got so strong that in 1920 they built a proper factory on Holbrook Avenue in Hamtramck, the historically Polish enclave tucked inside Detroit.
More than a century and four generations later, the family still runs it from that same Hamtramck plant — still smoking with real hardwood chips, still working from the old-world recipes. The unmistakable sausage-shaped neon sign (recently restored, bullet holes and all) is a Hamtramck landmark in its own right. In a metro that takes its kielbasa seriously, Kowalski is the name on the table.