Sunday marked the first-annual All-Star Cochon 555. Perhaps inevitably, this over-the-top love letter to all things pork was held in Vegas, the capital of over-the-top decadence, at the new Cosmopolitan Hotel. Winners and fan-favorites of Cochon 555, the traveling snout-to-tail pig cook-off, converged to show off their best swine bites, both savory and sweet. Headcheese, sliders, and porky spins on summer sweets (think cotton candy and snow cones) were in full-effect, as were pig puns. More

Seattle chefs brought their A-game to Sunday's Cochon 555, the Super Bowl of Sustainable Swine. And by A-game, I mean pork belly topped with kimchi, bacon brittle gelato, pork blood ravioli, Scrapple Bomba, ham topped with "lardonnaise", trotter fritters, lard biscuits and much, much more. The event, which hits eight cities in the U.S., was created to showcase family farms raising heritage breed pigs. More

Cochon 555 is a traveling pork fest that launched last year to showcase heritage breeds. When it made its way to Seattle on Sunday, organizer Brady Lowe was limping on crutches after a now-famous food fight last week in Portland where he was assaulted after an afterparty. Talk about some feral pig! More

Cochon 555 is a traveling series of food events featuring a competition of acclaimed local chefs cooking with heritage pigs. On Sunday night, the eighth in the 11-city tour was held in Chicago (the New York event was reviewed here on Serious Eats). Put on by Taste Network, an Atlanta-based company that does marketing and promotion for the artisan wine and cheese industries, the events serve three purposes. First, they increase awareness of heritage pigs and the food politics that go along with them. Second, they raise the profile of Taste Network. And third, the events serve as a fundraiser for charities related to the concept of eating locally produced, artisan-crafted foods. The Chicago event benefited Farms for City... More