The Pig

I love pork so when someone suggested meeting at this new Logan Circle snout-to-tail restaurant, it had a lot of appeal. We did have a great time, with the table next to the window as separate and as quiet as it could be in a noisy restaurant. Prices for both food and drink were reasonable and the food was fine.

However, thinking back on it I realized it seemed to be to be a bit of a toy restaurant. For one thing, it was mostly small plate, so the portions were not satisfying. Second, it is a restaurant based on a gimmick and virtually everything came across as a bit gimmicky. There is a 4 oz. beer, which indeed caters to a certain niche of non-beer drinkers, but looks like it belongs in a doll house. The menu, the decor, the pig theme in general is late American cutesy. It doesn't hark back at all to the genuine tradition of charcutiere. I went to the original snout-to-tail restaurant, Fergus Henderson's St. John, on one of my trips to London. It is a very sophisticated place, with real portions (and of course much higher prices). The Pig is like a toy version of that restaurant.

I opted for the small plate called porchetta even though a discussion with the waitress established that it was stuffed pork belly, so nothing like the real Italian porchetta, and I was suitably disappointed. It was a roasted or fried slice of pork belly, stuffed with a tasty potpourri of pork parts, but had nothing of the fragrance and tender meatiness of the real thing. The braised cheek that I tasted was quite good, but of course the portion was very small. The "small pig" plate of dried meat we all shared as a starter was very tasty, but there were only three meats and two of them were ham. The sides we shared were quite good, especially the roasted Brussels sprouts. We shared a couple of desserts, a toffee and a panna cotta, that were fine. The beer I had, Devil's Backbone from Virginia, was fresh and tasty and at 5.25 a good deal.

In this case, it really was the company that made the meal and The Pig provided a comfortable venue with a lot of buzz for that and reasonably good food. So I'm not complaining, I'm just saying I won't rush back.