'Patch-Hog' dining event coming to Patchogue restaurants
Chef Francis Derby in the kitchen of his Patchogue restaurant, The State Room. Credit: Newsday/Erica Marcus
Pork lovers, mark your calendars for Sunday, Oct. 15. That’s when Patch-Hog Boucherie takes over Patchogue with a pig-a-palooza for the ages: Six local restaurants will divvy up a heritage-breed hog, each one creating a special dish to be served with a complementary beverage.
The participating restaurants are Bobbique, Chops Steakhouse, Donatina Neapolitan Pizza Cafe, Rhum, Ruta Oaxaca and The State Room (less than a year old and a Newsday Top 100 spot). It was The State Room’s chef-partner, Francis Derby, who came up with the idea, which is based on the French tradition of “boucherie,” a celebratory event where people gather to butcher and then dine on a whole pig.
Back when Derby ran the kitchen at The Cannibal, the Manhattan shrine to carnivorism, he recalled: “I bought a whole Mangalitsa pig, wondered what exactly I was going to do with it and wound up calling a bunch of chef friends to help me. It was a big hit.”
He was also inspired by Patchogue’s tradition of bar crawls. “I thought, ‘what about a food crawl?’ and I started a conversation with chefs around town and everyone was just pumped.”
For Patch-Hog, Derby worked with the Livestock Conservancy, a North Carolina-based nonprofit whose mission is to protect America’s endangered livestock and poultry breeds from extinction, and settled on two 200-pound Gloucestershire Old Spot Heritage pigs.
None of the restaurants has finalized their dishes, but Derby hears that Donatina’s John Peragine is considering making porchetta out of the pork belly; Chops is looking for a loin to smoke. Like any good host, Derby will take whatever is left over and is prepared to work his magic on the “off-cuts,” organs, head, feet, etc.
Tickets for the event are $125 and include a dish and a drink at each participating restaurant. Check-in begins at 1:45 p.m. and, by 2 p.m., each of six groups will report to one of the restaurants, dig in, and then proceed to the next stop. Because there will be six starting points, groups should purchase tickets in one transaction to increase the likelihood of dining together. After all the eating is completed, there will be an after-party at Blue Point Brewery (not included in the $125).
There is limited availability for this ticketed event. For any additional information, email catering@thestateroomli.com. To purchase tickets click here.
