Goettafest vendors serve freshly grilled goetta to visitors at a busy food stand during Glier's Goettafest on the Newport riverfront.

How Cincinnati Turned a Thrift Food Into Goettafest

Newport's riverfront smells like frying goetta this weekend, but the dish began far from a festival stage. German immigrants arriving in 19th-century Cincinnati brought a grain sausage designed to stretch scarce meat with inexpensive oats. In Porkopolis, that early Cincinnati goetta tradition found exactly the right place to survive. The city's slaughterhouses and butcher shops…

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