First Look: Restaurant 3’s Bacon Week

Photo courtesy of
‘pigs in a row’
courtesy of ‘specialkrb’

Books have been written about it. Love songs. Poems. It’s salty. It’s crispy. It’s fatty. It’s bacon.

And Restaurant 3 knows about the beauty of the food, and the Clarendon neighborhood restaurant is celebrating the “Week of Bacon” from October 21-27, 2009. Each day for the duration of the week of bacon, the restaurant will offer a daily Bacon Happy Hour, where bar guests can feast on bacon bites such as bacon on a stick & bacon-wrapped shrimp and wash it all down with $3 craft beer draft specials. Not only can you stop by for bacon and beer, but Restaurant 3 is offering a Bacon Tasting Menu priced at $30 per person. I was lucky enough to preview a few of the Bacon Week specials, and let me tell you. It’s impressive.

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So the bar bites are lovely. The bacon-wrapped shrimp is super delicious, the bacon is crispy but doesn’t lose it’s fatty goodness. But what I really loved were the bacon on a stick. Thick sliced pork, with a “75/25 fat to meat ratio”, Chef Brian Robinson tells me he cures it with only salt, brown sugar, chili powder, regular sugar and bourbon. He says he lets it cure for 2 weeks, and then smokes it “low and slow”.

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If bar bites aren’t enough bacon for you, well, sit down to dinner, why don’t you. The $30 three-course tasting menu sounds delicious, and is as follows:
Course 1
Bacon & Egg Salad
Frisee/arugula tossed with chopped house-cured bacon and topped with a poached egg

Course 2
Bacon Crusted Mahi Mahi
Oven roasted mahi mahi dusted with a finely ground bacon powder and served over a bacon potato hash

Course 3
Bacon studded waffle with maple bacon ice cream

Chef Robinson told me he loves bacon because “you can do anything with it. Plus it imparts a lot of flavor on whatever you’re cooking it with.” Restaurant 3 is dehydrating the bacon to create the ground bacon powder, and uses the run-off grease to create the frisee salad dressing. I tried that salad, and let me tell you, the egg yolk, plus chopped bacon make for a delicious, savory salad.

If I were you, I’d make reservations for Bacon Week on OpenTable, just to make sure you get a spot. It’ll be well worth it. And with one of the best selected beer lists in Clarendon, I’d go early for happy hour too. It’s bound to be a hit.

3 is located at 2950 Clarendon Blvd. in Arlington, VA. Closest Metro stop: Clarendon (Orange line). Open for dinner Monday through Thursday from 5 p.m. – 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 5 p.m. – 11 p.m. and for dinner and brunch on Sunday from 11 a.m. – 9 p.m. For more information, call (703) 524-4440‎.

Katie moved to DC in 2007, and has since embarked upon a love affair with the city. She’s an education reform advocate and communications professional during the day; at night and on the weekends, she’s an owner here at We Love DC. Katie has high goals to eat herself through the entire city, with only her running shoes to save her from herself. For up-to-the-minute news and reviews (among other musings), follow her on Twitter!

4 thoughts on “First Look: Restaurant 3’s Bacon Week

  1. Michael Scott: I enjoy having breakfast in bed. I like waking up to the smell of bacon. Sue me. And since I don’t have a butler I have to do it myself… so, most nights before I go to bed I will lay out 6 strips of bacon out on my foreman grill. Then I go to sleep. When I wake up I plug in the grill. I go back to sleep again, then I wake up to the smell of crackling bacon. It is delicious, it’s good for me, it’s a perfect way to start the day. Today I got up, I stepped on to the grill and it clamped on to my foot. That’s it. I don’t see what’s so hard to believe about that.

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