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So, as Brian noted in the previous post, Saturday was International Bacon Day. West Seattle’s self-proclaimed “Temple of Porcine Love”, The Swinery, an ethical butcher shop specializing in locally raised pork-centric delights hosted a small celebration. They fired up the grill out back, opened their doors and laid out a big plate of cookies. I donned my bacon socks, grabbed a stack of Baconscotch stickers, packed up Kevin and The Vegetarian and set out to get a piece of the action.

There was already a line at around 10:45 A.M. The Swinery is not a very big place and Seattle has a large contingency of proud bacon fanatics. As I stood in line to pay up for a BaconDog and get my free cookie, KOMO 4, the local ABC affiliate was interviewing people and I was amongst the fortunate masses to put in my two cents about my love for bacon. Unfortunately, my plugs for BaconScotch hit the cutting room floor. Follow the link to catch the interview.

KOMO 4 News, Featuring BetterThanAndrew

For the record, I said “There’s a quote that says ‘bacon is meat candy’.” They truncated the front end. I am certainly not trying to take credit for Baconfreak‘s tagline.

Anyhow, that said, back to the topic at hand – bacony delights!

The Bacondog. Contrary to popular expectations, the Bacondog is not just a hot dog wrapped in bacon. Oh no! They claim it is made from 60% beef and 40% bacon, “whipped and piped” into a single casing. My sensitive tastebuds beg to differ, though. I distinctly detected the flavor of magic rainbows and angel tears in mine. But I digress. The Swinery does two sizes of Bacondogs. I opted for the large, of course. It was about the size of your average butcher’s brautwurst, grilled to perfection and served not on a bot dog bun or hoagie, but on a split, buttered, toasted slab of baguette. I gave mine a thin coating of stone ground dijon mustard and went to town. It was divine! The flavor was fantastic and well balanced. The bacon blended very well with the beef and seasonings. Not too salty, not too much flavor of one meat or the other. It was juicy, the casing was thin and unobtrusive but with nice snap. I MAULED that thing like a starving dingo on a fat unattended baby. I will definitely be back for more soon.

Blissful closure came in the form of a complimentary bacon chocolate chip cookie. I’m not sure if the Swinery bakes those themselves or have someone in the neighborhood make them. If they are an in-house product then you can add baking to the long list of things that they do well. It was a good soft cookie with quality semi-sweet chocolate IMO. The bacon content was subtle but noticeable. After the Bacondog, my palette was probably a bit tainted and it downplayed the bacon content of the cookie. Going on that assumption, the cookie was awesome. If that was not the case, as usual, I would have bumped up the bacon content, but only by a hair. They did a fantastic job.

All in all it was a very satisfactory International Bacon Day. The only thing that could have made it better would have been some other foods on the Swinery’s menu, like some Danger Fries or one of their bleu cheese bacon burgers, and a beer to wash it all down (We can’t drink scotch all the time) but I was low on cash monies and the Swinery doesn’t do beer anyway. Hey, nobody’s perfect.

I understand that Andrew paid a visit later in the day so he will undoubtedly have a follow-up of his own.