We’ve never eaten as much swine in an eighteen-hour period as we did in Healdsburg this past weekend, beginning with the Taste of Pigs & Pinot event on Friday night hosted by Charlie Palmer and the Hotel Healdsburg, and ending with the sandwich order that they got wrong at the Dry Creek General Store on Saturday afternoon, when all we wanted was some tuna to cleanse our palates but we ended up with more soppressatta. So. Much. Pork.
Somehow we muddled through, tasting a fantastic Jerusalem artichoke soup sprinkled with bacon lardons from Tyler Florence and his new right-hand man Jason Rose; a perfect bite of caviar inside a chicharrone from Beard finalist Bryan Voltaggio served with a delicious little cod cake; a succulent pork slider from Cyrus; and a delicious, smoky slice of ham from Chef Palmer that came from one of these little guys, marking the first time we actually met our food prior to eating it.
Check out our complete slideshow of the 5th Annual Pigs & Pinot festival, including both the tasting event — which also featured 50 Pinot Noirs vying for the Pinot Cup prize which was taken in the end by Woodenhead Vintners, with William Selyem coming in a close second — and Saturday morning’s Tournament of the Pig, in which Voltaggio went head to head with fellow Top Chef alumnus Kevin Gillespie in a pork cookoff. Consider us fully pork-fed.
Earlier: Charlie Palmer Loves San Francisco Too Much to Open a Restaurant Here [Grub Street]
