What is Baconopolis?

Baconopolis is a dream within a dream, and it is also where we went for Date Night several weeks ago.  It was an event run by Mr. Tom Douglas, a Seattle-area food mogul who owns a pile of restaurants in the space of a few city blocks near the heart of downtown Seattle, all well-reviewed if not slightly unaffordable.  He also owns an event space called the Palace Ballroom, where he holds events like Baconopolis.

Kelly learned of the event through Mr. Douglas’s web site.  Here I have extracted the four basic principles of  Baconopolis for the interested reader:

• Everyone loves bacon
• There are lots of different kinds of bacon
• There are lots of different things you can make with bacon
• Everything is better with bacon

For a mere twenty bucks a head, Baconopolis afforded the average man on the street the opportunity to sample 10 kinds of gourmet bacon and dishes prepared with that bacon.  Absolutely irresistable.  We snapped up a pair of tickets, and on the appointed Friday night, we took the bus into Seattle.

Our first stop was at the Palace Kitchen for happy hour while we waited for Baconopolis to start. Here we are!

Now, here is something you should try if you happen to eat at this fine establishment during happy hour: ham and cheese sandwiches. They may sound pedestrian, but they are made with Beecher’s cheese and they will knock your socks off.

When 6pm rolled around, we entered the ballroom.

Before us, there were 10 Bacon Stations. Here is one example of a Bacon Station:

Do you know what that man is doing? He is making deep tempura fried bacon. So, then, these are the primary components of the Bacon Station: you’ve got the bacon itself in sample strips under those two lamps, and he’s making sample dishes out of that bacon–in this case, deep-fried bacon. Sound amazing? It is. But I’m sure you’re wondering what else you can do with bacon besides deep-fry it. Well, here is the lovely Kelly trying some butterscotch pudding with bacon:

And here she is with another favorite–butterscotch syrup drizzled on a cube of bacon.

This went on, and on, for 10 stations. We had bacon with beans, bacon and peanut butter on banana bread, bacon with pea salad, bacon salt, and … well, by the time we had finished the rounds, we were in what you might accurately call a bacon-induced coma.

Then, like any other responsible adults who had just eaten bacon for dinner, we went out for tiramisu.

You can see the whole adventure documented with McPherson-level detail here.