Food: Pigging Out At The Publican

Dined for the second time last night at The Publican with my husband and a couple of dear friends.  The food is notoriously heavy and rich (pork/beer/seafood are their specialties).  The first time we ate there, my eyes took 3 days to uncross, and I am a true gourmande, so that is saying something.

The friend who wanted to try it was so excited, I did not want to harsh his mellow by saying it was a fat-a-thon, since that's kind of the point.  I put my stretchiest dress on and off we went.

Food to die for. Literally.

The Publican's menu was reliably over the top.  You couldn't eat there once a week or possibly not even once a month; you would die.  You'd drop right on the sidewalk waiting for your valet-parked car.  The porchetta (a huge thick slab of pork tenderloin infused with sage? rosemary?) and wrapped in - yes, more pork fat - demanded full concentration on the first bite.  I don't know how they got the flava so far down in there; possibly magic elves were involved.   The Publican's food doesn't speak to the prefrontal cortex at all.  It lights up your hindbrain and your amygdala and all that stuff under the bumpout at the back of your skull.  Don't try to debate Kierkegaard when all your brain will be able to manage is, "Meat good.  Fat good."

Other highlights of the meal included the rillettes, a pork/pork belly/duck mashup you spread on bread.  If you were trapped in the wilderness with one weeny little pot of rillettes, survival would be a snap - just a spoon a day would do it.   I didn't feel like alcohol, so ordered a remarkable bottle of ginger ale by Bruce Cost to cut the grease, which it did splendidly.
 
The Publican fully recognizes, and in fact celebrates, this orgy to fatty meats.  It's even built into the design of the restaurant.  At one point during the meal I noticed that the line of booths along the wall in the warmly-lit room resembled nothing more than a line of pigpens, filled with contented, glowing pigs fattening up.  The impression was strongly reinforced by the giant paintings of pigs hanging directly over their heads.  Evidently at least 40 other people in the world so far have been struck by the resemblance.  Judging from their comments, though, it looks as though people found the booths to be comfy-cozy, not creepy at all.  Me, I'm thinking, holy shit, is the owner going all Sweeney Todd on our heinies?? What if that's not porchetta we're eating?  I pushed the thought away as the palate-cleansing grape sorbet arrived, staggered out to the sidewalk, and as you can see, did not die.  Yet.

I do think everyone who likes meat and can afford it should try the place once to see what they think.  My only real criticism of The Publican is that there's so little to relieve the heaviness/greasiness of the food.  They do offer a "pork digestif" cocktail, and the aforementioned sorbet, but mostly it's unrelieved grease in every single dish - even in the side dishes.  The corn we ate on our first visit was overpoweringly rich; on this visit, a simple side dish of swiss chard, although delicious, was completely weighed down by cheese and what had to be butter.  If they wanted to prevent that woozy feeling - and who knows? maybe they want to encourage it - there would be a few "clean" items interleaved between all the heavy-hitters.  I'm thinking something as simple as some cold, raw apple slices on a plate along with your bread.  Or a super-simple green salad with a low- or no-oil tart citrus dressing.  You find yourself at the end of the meal thirsting for gallons of water and something fresh.

Yet the Publican does what it tries to do incredibly well.  And the fact that it's located smack in the middle of the Fulton Market meat district is, at least, an honest way of acknowledging that the diners are all there to literally pig out on big fat animals.  Fifty feet from the entrance, you're hit with the nauseating smell of 100 years' worth of spilled, not-quite-hosed-off, baked-on animal guts on the sidewalk and streets.  Yeah, sure, it's gross, but you know what?   Being a carnivore IS gross.  At least The Publican owns up to it.