Pig-on-pig action: street feast for the drunken masses
(Credit: Shane Redsar)
Sweet on swine
Two crazy words: pig candy. Lou on Vine has earned a following from this wondrous confection alone: It’s essentially bacon brittle, lacquered to a high brown-sugary shine and served in bite-sized pieces. Grub in Hollywood creates a similar effect with thicker, longer slabs of “sweet and sassy” bacon. While the name itself is cringeworthy, we must admit it's pretty soo-weet stuff.
B-to-the-L-T
This classic makes no bones about the centerpiece of its design. It’s what the club sandwich would be if it were brave enough to shed all that other stuff. A composition this spare requires the best ingredients, which are guaranteed at the farm-to-table altar of Santa Monica’s Rustic Canyon. The “B” is from Niman Ranch, paired against arugula, heirloom tomatoes and an extra “A” (avocado) for good measure.
Pigs in a bacon blanket
We’ve all been there: a brutal night fighting traffic and parking, walking 500 blocks in stilettos, contending with every slurring d-bag in the house. As your stomach is slowly committing seppuku, there they are—the anonymous carts of steaming, ethanol-soaking, bacon-wrapped hot dogs that make everything right again. It’s one of the few things that drunken hipsters and world-class chefs have in common: One special night, we caught culinary luminaries Daniel Boulud and Neal Fraser wolfing down danger dogs over bottles of vino—red, of course.
Bacon waffle
Hello, lazy man. This one’s for you. If composing mouthfuls of waffles and bacon with proportional dollops of syrup has become too taxing, Uncle Bill’s Pancake House will do all the work for you. This pancake specialist makes a mean waffle too—one that comes with your morning pig chopped finely and sprinkled generously into the batter. There’s also an alternative with bacon and cheese, but then, that would be overkill.
All wrapped up
There’s something so deliciously devious about taking the hale-and-heartiness of nature’s candy and binding it up with nature’s arterial time bombs. The bacon-wrapped date is a classic hors d’oeuvre—it's commonly fouled up by catering services the world over. But when it’s done right, oh baby, it’s the stuff of dreams. Our go-to for a long time was A.O.C., which stuffs petite Medjool dates with briny Parmesan, or even the "boozy" version at Bar Marmont, made with prunes. But just recently we came upon the ones displayed along Bar Pintxo’s tapas counter, and the sharp Cabrales blue tucked inside just about made us swoon.
Samgyeopsal—uncured pork belly
The first time with samgyeopsal can be a jarring, defamiliarizing experience. It’s shaped and striped like bacon, but it’s grayish and pale. Uncured pork belly—basically bacon, naked—has also taken a backseat to the more popular galbi. But Korean restaurants such as Honey Pig and Jong No Restaurant not only specialize in chewing the porcine fat, but also feature domed grills that utilize the flavorful renderings to make fried rice (at the former) or kimchi stew (at the latter) as a gratis course to round out your meal.
Designer pig
Culinary hounds love brands. Give them a foodie-worthy label, and they’ll drive miles to savor it. Nueske bacon is haute hog, the “Rolls Royce of ruskers” as one august journalist wrote. Plenty of local places are Nueske disciples, offering it by the pound (Surfas), sandwiched for breakfast (BLD) or thrown down on the ultimate burger (Hungry Cat and Beacon). But for what it’s worth, we think Nueske is practically immortalized at Square One. When perfectly cooked so that the fat renders, yet finished before it becomes a crunch bar, a smokier and porkier pig we have yet to see.
Jiyeon Yoo is Restaurants editor for Metromix Los Angeles.
