Gotta get goetta? NKy’s Colonial Cottage serves more of it than any other restaurant anywhere

By Shelly Whitehead
NKyTribune Contributor

Mention the word goetta just about anywhere in Northern Kentucky and one of two things is likely to happen. The person you’re speaking with will:

1.) Plunge into their long family history originating the world’s best recipe for the stuff, or

2.) Espouse loyalty to one particular mass-produced brand of the crispy, porky mix, launching you both into a raging argument about pork-to-beef ratios and the merits of seasoning with pepper versus summer savory.

At the Northern Kentucky Tribune, however, we are wise enough to know not to take a stance on issues so close to the heart. And yet, the passion that the aforementioned subject evokes is clear proof that our beloved goetta has today achieved something near religious status. Our focus then is on what you might call the high cathedral of goetta-dom: The Colonial Cottage in Erlanger.

We say this because when it comes to our region’s signature dish, this longtime Dixie Highway home of home-cookin’ sells more goetta than any other restaurant in the entire Commonwealth — or anywhere else.

Exactly how much goetta is that in a year’s time?

Well, the restaurant’s co-owner Matt Grimes worked it out. . .to the furlong.

“If you lay our goetta (slabs) end to end, they would go around the track at Turfway more than 40 times,” Grimes says with the pride of a new father.

“We serve right about five tons of goetta every year.”

Lest you doubt Mr. Grimes’ assertion, you need only stop by this 82-year-old family-run, locally-owned diner any morning of the week, when lovers of this grainy stuff from far and wide cram into booths and around tables to get their daily fix of the oat-and-meat conglomeration in all its magnificent forms.

“I usually get goetta and eggs — and with medium eggs that have the runny yokes. I like to mix that up and mash it together,” said Elsmere resident, Grady Billiter, as he sits at the counter finishing off a morning ritual he says started way back when he wasn’t much older than a piglet.

“We didn’t make it at home, but we have a friend who owns a meat business in Elsmere and he made it since I was a little kid in his meat shop. You’d get it straight out of the bag and, you know, kind of walk around with a little handful of goetta. But it’s been in my life since I’ve been old enough to hold it in my hand and eat it.”

In a nearby booth, a white-haired couple from Erlanger echoed that experience of “growin’ up with goetta” and said between the two of them they had been chomping down on goetta for a collective 140 years.

“My grandmother and mother made goetta,” said Bonnie Halderman as she turned to her husband Ron in the booth beside her.

“I make it at home,” said Ron. “I just like it fried. When I make it I make it with pork and the regular Dorsel brand pin oats because when I was growing up my dad worked for Dorsel flour.”

These stories of devout customers are emblematic, according to Mr. Grimes, of why he decided to proclaim goetta its signature dish when he bought the iconic family-owned restaurant 16 years ago.

Even though Grimes is not a native Northern Kentuckian, he married one. He is a pretty sharp fellow though and was quick to pick up on the region’s culinary love affair for all things goetta. He knew it was the perfect “signature” dish for this longtime food-spot fixture of the community.

About that time, he ran into Queen City Sausage Marketing Director Mark Balasa, a fellow who believes in goetta so much that his business cards say “goetta evangelist.”

You might say the two just came together like pinhead oats and pork. In no time at all, they were putting their heads together to elevate this loved but lowly dish to new and loftier heights.

“I put on my business cards ‘goetta evangelist,’ but I was never out to ‘sell’ goetta,” Mr. Balasa says. “My goal was to ‘proclaim’ it because I felt that once people tasted it, the product spoke for itself. Then I met Matt, and I needed to hook up with a restaurant willing to try new things. He was amazing right from the start.”

That’s when Matt, who owns the Cottage with his wife, Noelle, decided to press forward and “really focus on this staple that has so many people in Northern Kentucky passionate about it. I thought I could really build something from that.

“So we came up with one recipe over here and another over there. Goetta lends itself to so many different applications — from goetta wraps to just straight goetta, to goetta nachos to goetta fritters, to even putting goetta in our dressing.

“And when we started doing things differently, we got noticed — and the community really responded.”

Indeed, veteran Cottage waitress, Linda Exeler, says it’s probably safe to say that Northern Kentucky “runs” on goetta to some extent.

As one of the primary people serving up platters of patties and other goetta dishes at the Cottage over the last 33 years, she estimates that on any given morning about 75 percent of diners at the Cottage order goetta in some shape or form.

In fact, she has watched many of her customers grow from infant to adult and beyond regularly scarfing down this regional favorite as a way to start their days.

“It’s almost like a bloodline with people here – they just grow up eating goetta all the time,” she confides. “Yeah, goetta is very important around here.”