It's perverse for the Cod to leave the pork savvy precincts of his day job in the Carolinas, and return to his ancestral spawning grounds in TLOTB&TC and then opine on a roast pig, but that's what happening here in this post:
Through the good offices of FOC TWM, I found myself as part of a party of 12 doing the whole pig dinner at Posto Pizzeria in Somerville. I had a good time, was glad to be included, and enjoyed seeing old friends and making new ones. It's a nice spot, where Carberry's and the OG Bertucci's were, on the stretch between Porter and Davis that has claimed more than a few restaurants. For the whole pig dinner, they did a nice job with the salads and the accompanying bread, and the antipasti were good. So was the presentation of the whole pig. Unfortunately, the actual pig roasting was doomed by several bad ideas.
1) Roasting a pig in a woodfired pizza oven, if this is, in fact what they do, is a Bad Idea. I did not see the pig cooking, but it seemed to suffer from a lack of the slow and low that is critical for roasting pork
2) Attempting to serve a whole roast pig in a (semi) soigne presentation is like teaching it to sing, in that it wastes your time, and annoys the pig, and as such is a Bad Idea. The point is humans + roasted carcass = atatvistic fun, but it's hard to do that when you are also trying to sell white peach bellinis. So, they show you the whole roasted thing (out come the iPhones -- it is, frreals, a nice moment -- and then take it away. And bring it back, in pieces.
3) Piece #1 was slices of rolled loin, w/ skin on, stuffed w/ housemade sausage. Fine in principle but the skin did not even pretend to be crisp enough to eat, and the stuffing, suffused w/ carrots and not much else, was cloying.
4) Piece #2 were the ribs, in a sort of citrus marinade, and they were actually pretty good. However, esp w/ a table of 12, it would have made much more sense to serve each rib w/ attendant loin, ideally w/ skin attached and crisp. That's how Lydia Shire used to do it at Biba, so while it might require more time and effort, it can be done.
5) Piece #3 was Everything Else, busted up and slung into bowls. I enjoyed my trotter, which likely got a bit more heat than the rest of the pig. Sitting down at a table with fork, spoon and butterknife, it was hard to get much traction.
Like I said, the salads and breads were good. And I enjoyed the company. This was the first whole roast pig I've eve had at a restaurant, and it may well be a better idea in theory than in practice. At the very least, to make it work you would need to be a place that communicated expectations to customers, rather than vice versa. An unfussy presentation like Chang's Bo Ssam at Momofuku might be a tough sell at an upscale pizzeria calling itself an Enoteca, but that may point back to the larger Bad Idea of trying to do roast pigs at an upscale pizzeria.
You want to have a pig roast with your friends? Get a Caja China, a murder robe, call your butcher, and go to. You want nice antipasti and pizza? Check out Posto.
All the best to you on your journey to personal success
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Posted by: adobe 8 pro | Monday, 30 January 2012 at 11:28 PM