What We Talk About When We Talk About Pork Slope
Co-owner John Bush, via Serious Eats
Pork Slope, the much-anticipated roadhouse dive from the Talde team, opens this Saturday night, and the Internet is buzzing like it’s the last bar on earth. Here is what we know:
1. Pork Slope opens on Saturday, August 18th. By no coincidence, Saturday, August 18th is Patrick Swayze’s birthday.
1a. Other than the choice of opening day, there’s absolutely no Swayze connection. “It is a complete joke that has gotten out of hand,” Pork partner John Bush told Grub Street. Do not expect it to be the Double Deuce.
1b. But there IS going to be a drink called the Double Deuce ( 2-ounce shot of whiskey with a 22-ounce glass of beer).
2. Pork Slope is gonna serve beer and whiskey, and it’s gonna be affordable. Pork partner John Bush spells it out: “I want you to walk in with $20 in your pocket and walk out full and with a buzz,” he told Serious Eats. “Or at least a really good buzz.”
3. In a nod to their heritage (they’re taking over the space of the former Park Slope staple), they’re using Aunt Suzie’s same dishware. Pork Slope: keeping history alive since Patrick Swayze’s birthday.
4. Goes without saying: all three Pork Slope guys really, really like pork.
5. There will be 25 beers on tap.
6. The menu features the genre of cuisine Dale Talde calls, “shit we wanna eat.” “Shit we wanna eat” includes the (more refined) biscuits and Surryano ham, chili con carne, and something called the Porky Melt (“a cheese-stuffed bratwurst patty prepared like a patty melt, with mustard and girdled onions”). There will be absolutely no raw vegetables. Go to ‘sNice or something.
7. If you want some “twisted molecular gastronomy version of Buffalo wings,” you should look elsewhere. Pork Slope isn’t interested in twisted molecular gastronomy.
8. They’ll be open till 4am, with food served till 2. Because if you’re there at 2am ordering a Porky Melt, “you’ve already made at least two bad decisions that night, you might as well just make another.”
9. There will also be a pool table.
10. Two boars heads will decorate the place. Thanks to a FiPS contest, judged by America’s top hog-naming experts (the Pork Slope dudes themselves), those two boars will be named Piggy Smalls and Boss Hog. Say hi.
