[Photographs: Roger Kamholz]
At this year's Baconfest Chicago, held on April 20, chef Joseph Rose of Lockwood took home one of the coveted Golden Rasher awards for most creative use of bacon at the event's lunch session. Beating out a tough field that included chefs from Browntrout, Untitled, and Barn & Company, Rose won with an Asian-flavored take on the classic combination of bacon and eggs: a slow-poached egg with bacon-and-onion hash, bacon dashi, and nori flakes.
[Photograph: Collis Hancock]
At Baconfest, Rose presented his creation in cups (shown above), so that attendees could down all the ingredients at once, in one shot. "The whole point was to beat [the egg] up and slurp it down," Rose told me when I recently met up with him in the sprawling kitchen at the Palmer House HIlton, where Lockwood is the principal restaurant. Rose, who came to Lockwood following stints at Sixteen and the Pump Room, graciously walked me through how he prepares this crowd-pleasing dish, which he conceived especially for Baconfest. "We ended up doing about 530 portions with the egg," he added. Once the team's supply of eggs ran out, Rose said, they carried on with the remaining ingredients and served 150 more servings.
Rose is a big fan of Asian ingredients, Japanese and Thai in particular, and this dish is a strong reflection of his tastes, as an eater and chef alike. "I used the flavors that I like and the flavors I like to cook with," Rose said. Even though his dish thrilled the Baconfest crowd, he has no immediate plans to add the egg, hash, and dashi combination to the menu at Lockwood. That said, Rose did permit that it just might turn up again come fall. In the meantime, check out the slideshow to see how chef Rose creates this Golden Rasher-worthy play on gold old bacon and eggs.
Lockwood
17 East Monroe Street, Chicago, IL 60603 (map)
312-917-3404
lockwoodrestaurant.com
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