Note to Cinda, Elianna’s Mom:  Cinda – I think it’d be best if you looked away.  Remember that time we made your latkes? Maybe you should just read that again instead. This post… well, I wouldn’t feel comfortable with you seeing it. Down this road there lies a lot of pork, which is I know is traif, and I shouldn’t eat it.  Worse than that quite frankly, the following pictures are deeply and inappropriately culinary pornography. For example:

 

 

See? You don’t want to read this.  I think brisket would be a better choice.  Everyone else who isn’t a Jewish mother, please feel free to read on. 

It turns out Ryan Farr knows his way around a pig. On an overcast Sunday afternoon, 4505 Meats took over Coffee Bar and brought a Pig to share. He was local heritage, and all of the other slow food approved buzz words (read: green and swine flu free).  I think he looks happy.

 

 

 

Ryan Farr quickly took the pig to task, while the food paparazzi (guilty) hovered over him.  Ask he took the pig apart, he answered questions and explained what he was doing. 

  

 

Breaking down a pig this size takes time, and to accommodate this there were beers and wine being poured, chicharrones to snack on, and helpful reading material. 

   

 

Eventually there were corndogs too. These are great, largely because of a really crunchy cornmeal crust. The beer was a Big Daddy IPA – which seemed fresh in the bottle, and had a great hoppy herbal aroma. 

 

 

 

 

And a few more butchering photos – now, smaller parts:

 

 

 

 

And it’s off to the grill. 

 

 

Ok, that’s the last raw pig’s head, I swear. Next was much grilling, roasting, and roatiseratizing (this may not be a word – but it should be.)

 

 

 

 

One by one, the roasted pig parts began to come off the grill. The butchering area was cleaned up and reset for cooked meat. Salads were brought out. 

 

 

 

The roasted carrots in this potato salad were particularly good. They were grilled, and had a distinct anise character that really stood out.  But I swear, there was a second salad. See, in line, there are people eating salad, being healthy!

 

 

Who am I kidding? Back to the pork:

 

 

 

 

And there was much rejoicing. And photography. 

 

 

 

The belly was good, but it was the crunchy parts that really did it for me, like the crust on the porchetta and the saddle.  Oh the saddle!

 

  

 

Eventually, people ate their fill, and as the crowd thinned the line for the pork evened out. The last few dishes to emerge were for the more adventurous. 

 

 

 

 

All that was left was dessert – peanut butter chocolate cupcakes topped with bacon. 

  

I know they fit the theme, but these were really the only thing I tasted that I didn’t just love.  The cupcakes were a bit dry, and I didn’t really need them.  It doesn’t matter anyway, since they pork laden baked good can’t damper an afternoon like this. Drinking a local IPA under typical San Francisco overcast skies, with a local pig being cooked and eaten as a community activity feels primal. The event felt and tasted local, as the community gathered to roast a meal.

 

   

   

 

How can this not be Kosher?!

PS – There are more photos.  It’s ridiculous, I know. I think this new camera thing is working out. 

 

 

Tags: coffee bar, mission, pig, ryan farr, Traif

This entry was posted on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 6:01 am and is filed under Flickr, Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.