Glacier Valley Rotary’s 2017 BaconFest sold out again this year. Not one of the 350 attendees had a heart attack on site.
The event pits Juneau food vendors against one another in a bacon cook-off. This year there were 18 entries from 12 different vendors.
Maple syrup, jalapeno, cheddar — these are the stalwarts of bacon pairings, and they were on full display in quiches, sticky buns, donuts and wraps at the event.
But vendors didn’t limit themselves to the ordinary. Featured items ran the gamut from the traditional to the outlandish. Juneau’s culinary explorers incorporated Brussel sprouts, gold leaf, coconut, milkshake and Rice Krispie treats in their bacon-infused creations, with some earning great acclaim for the adventurous dishes.
All awards, with the exception of the Professional’s Choice Award, were selected by attendees at the Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall.
Savory and sweet
The first-place winner in the savory category, Coconut Thai Cuisine’s “Caramelized Pork Belly Thai Soup,” is a working-class Thai dish influenced by Chinese peasants. It’s not currently on the menu at Coconut Thai, but it could make an appearance there as a limited-edition item, the downtown restaurant’s Sitthida Sukkamon said.
“Thailand has a lot of influences from other countries like China, Vietnam, Laos and India,” Sukkamon explained by phone on Monday. “… Chinese immigrants who were poor, they used old vegetables to make a soup and put pork belly in because it’s a cheap kind of meat.”
Like many of the world’s best foods, it’s a dish created out of necessity. Chinese immigrants to Thailand would make the soup from nearly-expired produce, saving it from the trash can. Often working hard jobs as laborers, Thailand’s Chinese immigrants needed high-energy foods, which is where the pork belly comes in.
“Pork belly is poor people’s food, because richer people often buy leaner cuts. They use it to make an oil out of it. If they have access to vegetables, they just make it as a soup. Labor people in Thailand need something for energy. Pork belly gives you fat for energy,” Sukkamon said.
Sandpiper Cafe won the sweet category with their “Bacon Maple Milkshake with Candied Bacon and Smoke Salt.” It’s a milkshake you eat with a piece of candied bacon as a spoon.
The cafe just started offering milkshakes and pegged BaconFest as a good venue to promote their new offering. Vendors also voted for it as the co-winner of the Professional’s Choice Award.
The recipe is made with half and half, Hagen Das ice cream and real maple syrup with a piece of candied bacon as a spoon.
Boliver used the alder-smoked salt, sourced from a Sitka company, in two stages: once before cooking the bacon and again previous serving to “open up the aromatics of the dish.”
The professional’s choice
Setting the high bar for ambition was V’s Cellar Door with their “Hand-made Bacon Infused Chip topped with Fusion Bacon Slaw.”
V’s nacho-like creation took home second place in the savory category and tied Breeze-In for the Professional’s Choice Award, voted on by fellow vendors.
Owner and operator Venietia “V” Santana said her nachos were about five months in the making. With no recipe to follow, she and her crew first had to figure out a way to incorporate bacon into their tortilla chip. This was a process of experimentation.
“We really knew what we wanted to do, but it took a lot of practice. The bacon fat was causing the tortilla to break, so we figured out from there that you have to dry them before baking,” Santana said.
Next, they tinkered with different additions to the chip, eventually opting for their signature cabbage slaw and a trio kimchi, avocado and fusion aiolis. Instead of topping the nacho off with their usual sesame seed garnish, the Mexican-Korean fusion joint opted for crumbled bacon.
Breeze-In took home runner-up honors in the sweet category for their “Bacon Maple Bar Infused with Amaretto,” a treat so rich many BaconFest attendees chose to save this one for last.
The mad scientists at Breeze In filled a bacon-topped maple donut with peanut butter and shot it through with amaretto simple syrup. The amaretto shot came in a plastic eye dropper sticking out of the donut, giving the whole dish a clinical feel.
Side effects of Breeze In’s winner include sleepiness, weight gain and euphoria. Moorehead might soon make a celebratory batch for sale in-store.
The treat is a riff on Breeze In’s popular maple bacon bars. The final product didn’t resemble anything on the convenience store’s shelves, but “reinterpreted all the flavor profiles” from their popular donut, Breeze-In’s Dave Moorehead said.
The convenience store takes great pride in their pork. Moorehead said that, to his knowledge, they are the only local food purveyor to cut, cure, slice and cook their own bacon in-house.
“We go through about 200 to 500 pounds of bacon a week,” he said.
• Contact reporter Kevin Gullufsen at 523-2228 or kevin.gullufsen@juneauempire.com.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the winner of the Professional’s Choice Award. V’s Cellar Door and the Sandpiper Cafe tied for the Professional’s Choice Award at BaconFest, not V’s Cellar Door and Breeze In. Also, an earlier version quoted Boliver as saying “maple milk” which, to our knowledge, doesn’t exist. Boliver was actually referring to two different ingredients. What he really said was, “maple, milk.”
V’s Cellar Door’s “Hand-made Bacon Infused Chip topped with Fusion Bacon Slaw” was a popular item at Saturday’s BaconFest at the Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall. Owner Venietia Santana said the creation, which tied for first place for Professional’s Choice Award, was about five months in the making. (Photo courtesy Mandy Massey | Glacier Valley Rotary).
Crew from the Breeze-In pose in front of samples of their BaconFest creation, “Bacon Maple Bar Infused with Amaretto.” Breeze-In took home two awards Saturday. (Photo courtesy Mandy Massey | Glacier Valley Rotary).
