BarBacon

What: Bar/restaurant

Where: New York City, NY, USA (836 9th Ave)

Hours: 12pm-10pm Sunday and Monday, 12pm-2am Tuesday to Saturday

My wife and I paid a visit to BarBacon this past weekend. We had been wanting to check it out for a while now but, alas, a visit to this place was incompatible with our quest to fit in our wedding apparel. Now that we are married though and can get fat without worrying too much, we decided it was time to go to town. That and it was new year's day, we were hungover and the thought of bacon and booze seemed like the perfect plan for lunch.

Of course we had to get the beer and bacon flight before even reading through the whole menu. Four types of bacon and four beers, paired according to the infinite wisdom of the house, or your own, if you want to choose your own beer. We let the house deal the cards.

Sam Adams Rebel Grapefruit IPA with peppered bacon, Ommegang Hennepin with sweet bacon, McKenzie's seasonal reserve cider with some sort of bacon that tasted like it had been rubbed with popcorn and 2 Roads' Route of All Evil with jalapeño infused bacon. Needless to say, just what the doctor ordered for a hangover. My personal favorites were the peppered bacon and the jalapeño infused bacon, while my wife prefered the popcorn tasting one.

Once our hangover was down to a mere headache, we ordered pulled pork and bacon dumplings with bbq sauce and nachos with chili con carne, guacamole, bacon, pico de gallo and black beans. Although both of them were really good, the dumplings were simply incredible. Sweet, smoky, salty and porky. Yum.

We washed these down with a Founders Pale Ale, in my case and, in the case of Christine, Lagunitas Brown Shugga'. The pale ale wasn't bad, but it was more in the English style, full of malty depth rather than the hoppiness American pale ales have gotten me used to. Brown Shugga' though was impressive. The waitress presented it as a brown ale (fail), but it's far from it. At 9.8%, it hides the alcohol with an impressive fruitiness and maltyness, which then transforms into a bitter dryness, which in turn develops into a sweet and round finish that confuses your brain and dulls your senses. Okay, the alcohol is the one that dulls your senses, but you don't really realize it because your attention is focused on the flavor.

That would've ordinarily been enough for us to call it quits, had my wife not seen they had chocolate covered bacon for desert. Yes, chocolate covered bacon. I have no proof of this but I believe chocolate covered bacon was invented by the Romans right before the empire fell. After that the barbarians eradicated chocolate in the old world and it was never brought back until the new world was discovered. In other words, it's the epitome of decadence.

Decadence is awesome though, surprisingly. Especially when you dunk that decadence in bacon flavored whipped cream. I'm trying not to curse on this blog (and it's hard for me, remember I'm Spanish), but these inventions in modern cookery make it very hard for me not to call the inventor of this a f... friggin' genius. And a son of a bitch for making me a future tub of lard. Can you imagine what that whipped cream would be like over brunch on top of pancakes???? I'm gonna definitely find out at home.

No hangover is completely cured without a bloody mary though, so I went for the house version to top it off: bacon bloody mary, a pickled bloody mary, extra spicy (my head was sweating as I drank) with a slice of bacon dunked in. Although this blog's absent collaborator, Mo'Problemas, makes a tastier bloody mary, the bacon really gives it an unexpected depth of flavor. Especially if you push it in the drink, coz let's face it, who could EAT more bacon at that point.

The only distasteful part to the drink was that it was served in a mason jar with the logo of Bud Light (I turned it around for the picture, for everybody's peace of mind). A mason jar. Trying to attract hipsters are we, AB? If they spent the money they spend on marketing and this kind of stupid shit, on actually making a good beer, the world would be such a better place.

Although in other circumstances we would've stayed there for most of the day (especially to finish watching the Bruins get creamed), after the bloody mary I was ready for an aspirin and a nap, so we went home to a nice siesta filled with dreams of pigs flying through the sky, but not without a certain sadness. After all, we had found a truly remarkable place we would not be able to return to for at least one more year.