Pig BBQ Joint

Nice spot to eat and people watch

 We finally made it to the new location in the northwest corner of the Atrium building.   I had been avoiding it because we have pulled pork everywhere and none of it as a good as I can do at home.   I see Greek Restaurants offering pulled pork, at Cullinaire it was on offer from a slew of restaurants, it is the 2010/11 version of the potato skins or zucchini sticks.  

Given the bad experience I have had with the food from Smoken Bones Cook Shack, and people tell me this is the best BBQ in Victoria, I was not wanting to try Pig.  

After meeting for worship on Sunday, Sheila and I ran some errands and then wanted to eat lunch.   She chose Pig, I tried some lame excuses about parking as a reason to go there (I was honestly holding out for Dim Sum).   She got me to go and I was impressed.

The setting is interesting, the tables and chairs are really basic.   The chairs look like basic school chairs from decades ago.   The tables all come with rolls of paper towels - when I saw this coming I knew the food would messy, which is how BBQ should be,

I ordered the pulled pork sandwich and the fried mac and cheese.   Sheila ordered the schnitzel, I will leave it to her to talk about here food.

Pulled Pork Sandwich

As I said earlier, I have utterly underwhelmed by restaurant pulled pork in this city so my expectations were not very high, the bar they had to hurdle was low.   What I got was the best pulled pork sandwich I ever had.   The meat was perfect, not stringy, not greasy, not dry and not mealy.  If I had any comment on the meat, it would have been nice to get a bit more crunchy crust, but with a large shoulder being BBQed, there is only so much surface to work with.   The bun was a fresh soft white bun that soaked up the sauce and the juices from the pork.    The pork was topped with slaw like things, I honestly did not dissect the sandwich as I just wanted to eat it.   The sauce was too sweet for my personal taste, but that is me, I prefer BBQ sauce that is not sweet at all.   That said, the sauce started a bit sweet, but it had a long and very interesting finish.   I suited the sandwich very well.

Deep fried goodness

I did not know what to expect from the fried Mac and Cheese, what I got was this small block of Mac and Cheese that has been crumbed and deep fried.   Very cool and interesting.   It is not something I could make at home.   It is the crust on the Mac and Cheese that we always fight over in the house, with this preparation there is the equivalent to four servings of crust on one small block.

Serving drinks in canning jars is fun but it has been done many times before, it is one aspect of the restaurant that felt a bit gimmicky and forced.

The food came on a plastic tray covered in butchers paper, a smart way to serve food that is by nature messy.  

All in all I am very impressed and I will be going back.   The price was good as well, very affordable, in fact the meal was cheaper than if I went to Macdonalds.