Bacon from "Frenchie to Go"

Because sometimes you really miss things from home, but this isn't exactly something from home.

First, some background.

On the street below our apartment is a fantastic series of restaurants by Chef Gregory Marchand.  He's a french chef that picked up the nickname Frenchie when he worked for Jamie Oliver in London.  

He runs a fantastic trio of places here on rue du Nil:

• Frenchie - the main restaurant, small, cozy, fantastic, impossible to get reservations for (2+ month wait)
• Frenchie's Wine Bar - first come/first serve seating because the restaurant has a 2-3 month waiting list for reservations
• Frenchie-to-Go - a bistro/café that does breakfast and lunch

I confess that the coupling of the fantastic food and the fact that's the closest place to get lunch causes me to eat there regularly (sometimes twice a week).   But the staff is great.  Warm and friendly greetings.  And the food is, well...  it's fantastic.

One of my lunch favorites is his pulled pork sandwich. It's idiosyncratically french, with the use of a coleslaw that contains beets as well as cabbage.  But it works.  Oh does it work.  It's easily the best pulled pork I've ever had.

The other favorite is a bacon fumé english muffin avec un oeuf et de cheddar.  It's a "breakfast" sandwich.  But it's divine.  The bacon is out of this world, house-cured with maple syrup and then smoked.  The cheese is a fantastic Cheddar from Neal's Yard Dairy.

When we first ate at the café, I noticed that the menu said that they sold bacon by the kilo.  They didn't for a long time (they needed to cure a large enough stock of it, because it's house-cured).  But it was finally available. 

And it's perfect.  It is exactly what I imagine bacon to be.  Just enough fat, well marbled, smokey, with just a hint of sweetness hiding among the flavors.

I don't have any photos from after cooking it, I'm sorry.  It doesn't last that long.  In fact, when I cooked up a bunch for brunch on Christmas, I had to stake out my own claim, or it all would have vanished.