[sh-slideshow-post id=”28011″]
A quick hit on the new Zazu Restaurant at the Barlow. If you haven’t been over since their summer opening, its worth putting on your to-do list. The expansive dining room and outdoor seating area have been custom-built to owner Duskie Estes and John Stewart’s growing needs, with 30-foot ceilings, lots of nouveau-barn and brushed steel details and a giant pink pig head (made of recycled oil cans and other refuse, natch) by local artist Patrick Amiot overseeing the operation. Because what else would you expect from the nationally recognized King and Queen of Pork.
The menu and hours have also expanded, with the couple now serving lunch, weekend brunches and dinner with an all-star lineup of everything but the squeal, including plenty of salumi and bacon from Stewarts’ Black Pig Meat Company. For noshing, don’t miss the bacon caramel popcorn or chicharrones flavored with apple cider vinegar or rosemary.
We missed out on the pig face “poutine” (fries slathered with piggy parts, Tabasco gravy and blue cheese), and pig heart side, but loved the pimento macaroni and cheese with bacon salt and truffled salumi. The dinner menu expands out to include more meaty slabs of meat like pork belly, beef shank and lamb, along with roasted bone marrow and a “snout to tail sampler”.
Between 3 and 6p.m., you can crab a happy hour drink and a mini bacon burger or pizza, or hit “after hours” from 10p.m. to midnight on Friday and Saturday for “wings and waffles” or salumi and pickles and cocktails from the full bar…like the “bacon and eggs”, a honey whiskey sour with bacon bourbon and an egg. Now that’s a midnight tipple I can get behind. Open for lunch and dinner Wednesday through Sunday, brunch from 9a.m. on Saturday and Sunday, and dinner only on Monday. Closed Tuesdays. 6770 McKinley #150, Sebastopol, 707-523-4814.