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| - Hoof Cafe provides a porky, head-to-tail take on the brunch meal. Out of about 15 items written on the chalkboard, about 10 feature main ingredient coming from the pig and most of them are some sort of offal dish. Now that's my kind of brunch place!
The tongue grilled cheese sandwich, with a pastrami-like construction, juicy with big flavor, was easily one of the best sandwiches I've ever had anywhere in terms of taste. Suckling pig rib lollipop had pretty intense smoky flavor paired with a sweet dipping syrup. The meat was quite clingy to the bone but tasty. Superb take on the southern grits with pig tail, poached eggs adding even more richness to the dish, but I am not so sure about the boring presentation of the tail as a nondescript block. I sampled pig's head turned into a slab of meat (like headcheese without aspic), and loved the fatty, savory, though not exciting-looking dish. "Belly pastrami" was likewise great, crispy but also meaty and bacon-y. I liked the richness of the foie gras paired with ripened strawberries, but it got just a little cloying with toasted brioche and syrup. I sampled a companion's pulled pork benedict, it was very good but not something I'd choose over other dishes. Overall, the selection and taste were topnotch. This is the sort of brunch I would love to eat over most traditional places serving more formulaic brunch dishes.
I considered rating this place 4 stars because the space was tiny, crowded, and almost unbearably hot on my visit, with stale, sticky air. But the food was good and heat waves not so common anyway, so I'll just make a remark about it and still give 5 stars.
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