Baconfest at Stan Mansion
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Until Baconfest this past Saturday, there hasn't been so much concentrated excitement and enthusiasm over fatty strips of pork in one place since Beggin' Strips commercials. While The A.V. Club can't be counted among those who get irregular heartbeats over bacon, we could hardly resist the event at Logan Square's posh Stan Mansion—and neither could anyone else, apparently: The event sold out 800 tickets for two sessions. In addition to vendors displaying their bacon wares, 24 chefs from restaurants like The Bristol (2152 N. Damen Ave., 773-862-5555) and Otom (951 W. Fulton Mkt., 312-491-5804) presented the ingredient in inventive ways, right down to boozy iterations of the meat being served. And while we can't explain the obsession, we can present these highlights from the bacon-y bacchanalia.
That stifling burst of bacon aroma. Anyone walking into the second-floor banquet hall was plowed with a staggering bacon scent that invaded the nasal cavities and caused the unprepared to cough uncontrollably in surprise. After that initial burst, we got used to the smell—until after the event, when the persistent stench stuck to our clothes and warranted a good, long shower.
John Leydon: A man with a meaty dream.
Scent of the gods. John Leydon is a man with a simple dream: to sell bacon-scented cologne and perfume. Leydon admitted the idea started off as a joke nine years ago, but he and his company, Fargginay, "want to be taken seriously." After some components roll in from China in a couple of months, Leydon has his sights on selling this stuff at high-end stores like Barneys for $38. While the sample swabs smelled more like rope soaked in canned peaches, it's hard to find fault with his passion: "How often do you get a chance to do something that's never been done before?" The scent is slated to launch first in Britain, which probably explains why Leydon says he wants to snag Austin Powers as a spokesman.
Bacon and alcohol–why not? To help cleanse the palate, the Baconfest organizers smartly offered plenty of booze to liven up the senses between tastings. Cocktails mixed with the relatively new Bakon Vodka were a popular novelty, while Bar Deville’s (701 N. Damen Ave., 312-929-2349) mixologists served a bacon-infused Old Fashioned that smelled exactly like bacon, and tasted exactly like... regular bourbon. Maybe that's for the best.
Bacon tacos and Bacon/Snickers hybrids. Chef Chris Lateano of Southwater Kitchen (225 N. Wabash Ave., 312-236-9300) took home shift two’s Best In Show prize for his bacon rillettes and bacon fat-griddled brioche croutons, but equally tasty were the bacon tacos from Chef Rick Gresh of David Burke’s Primehouse (616 N. Rush St., 312-660-6000). Spiced with ramp salsa and served in bacon tortillas, the tacos were served by gentlemen sporting mini-sombreros and novelty mustaches. For the more adventurous, there were the frozen bacon Snickers bars concocted by Chef Derek Simcik of Atwood Café (1 W. Washington St., 312-368-1900), who made replacing the nuts usually in Snickers with crunchy hunks of bacon seem like a perfectly sensible, sane idea.
The bacon expo, featuring loads of highly niche items. Some accessories fell safely within the boundaries of reason—variations of bacon salt, bacon-based dog products, even bacon hot sauce—but is there really a market for bacon-flavored toothpicks? Same goes for the Mr. Bacon’s Big Adventure board game, although the similarly nutty Mr. Bacon vs. Monsieur Tofu action figures elicits a chuckle (mostly because Tofu wears a monocle); hopefully we’ll see these two whenever someone organizes “Tofu-palooza.”
More’s BLT cupcake. Savory cupcakes are hardly anything new, but when we happened upon More’s (1 E. Delaware Pl., 312-951-0001) veritable pyramid of unusual cupcakes, the BLT one—a bacon cake topped with ranch-dressing frosting and a tomato chunk—won out against all common sense. Skeptically, we bit into a tiny sample one, and swallowed out of pure politeness. Gritty, sweet, and overwhelmingly ranch-like (what were we expecting), it took the spirit of adventure to a sickly sweet realm that needn’t exist. Maybe everyone should just stick to tinkering with bacon.
