Boccalone

“Tasty Salted Pig Parts!”

In the war against mass-produced homogeneous crud, this is the battle cry of Boccalone, a new salumi establishment opened recently by Mark Pastore and Chris Cosentino. These are the two gentlemen responsible for bringing Incanto{.broken_link} to the world (a restaurant which any loyal reader will already know I enjoy. They’ve spun off Chef Cosentino’s love for salumi/charcuterie into an independent business in Oakland.

Thanks to the Boccalone newsletter I knew that they were going to be plying their wares today at the open house of Dashe Cellars. The main draw for the event was supposed to be the wine (which was good) but I planned to attend for the pig. Something like that shouldn’t be undertaken alone, so the Albertellis came up to join me.

Many different forms of piggy goodness were on display today. The ones we tried:

• Brown Sugar and Fennel Salame
• Lardo
• Pancetta
• Salame Pepato
• Mild Italian Sausage
• Coppa di Testa
• Mortadella
• Pate di Campagna

They were all fantastic but the mortadella really blew us all away.

We so enjoyed the porculence that we decided we needed to have it on a regular basis. We are now proud members of their Salumi Society. Twice a month we will receive and portion out (we’re sharing a membership) a sachetto of artisinal meats. It’ll be about 2.5lbs total, which is a lot more than it sounds like. This wouldn’t have been possible had I not moved back into town as all sachetto must be picked up in person at Boccalone in Oakland. It also wouldn’t have been possible without sharing the membership as a single person probably shouldn’t be eating 2.5lbs of this stuff in a two week period.

Our first serving of porcine nirvana will be retrieved next Saturday. We won’t know until later in the week what will be in the sack. Mystery Meat! Woo hoo!