The Scene At Boccalone

Even before eating at Incanto, I admired chef Chris Cosentino’s website and blog for his its demonstration of passion for meat, which includes the respectful raising, treatment, and slaughter of animals and using as much of them as possible. Eating there is really terrific. The menu, consisting of “rustic Italian cooking”, does highlight offal and “unusual” cuts of meat, but is truly diverse and can accommodate any diet. We’ve only been once, and we had a long and tremendous meal that included a flight of Toscana wines, stuffed peppers (it was late summer), a pig trotter cake, sublime chicken liver ravioli with aged balsamic, and a roasted goat leg with, if I remember, a sort of salsa verde, and finally a bay leaf panna cotta (which was also delicious, and testament to the range of Incanto’s staff).

So with this experience in mind, I’ve wanted to join the Salumi Society at Boccalone for months, the salumi company founded by Cosentino and Mark Pastore, the owners of Incanto. I mean, “tasty salted pig parts.” Uh huh. I don’t know what took me so long! But finally I signed up, and Saturday hopped the bus up to Noe Valley to pick up my first box.

While in the neighborhood, I visited the N.V. Farmer’s Market for some greens. The Market is kind of, what do you expect in Noe Valley?, cute, I guess. More strollers than vendors. I will confess that I was a little over-served of Franziskaner and bourbon the night before, and it was freaking hot on Saturday, and I was grouchy about the strollers and the dogs. I had to remind myself, though, that I was the visitor and should smile. So I smiled.

When I finally made it to Incanto, everything got better. First of all, as pictured below, the first thing you encounter is a table full of meat! That brightens anyone-not-vegetarian’s day. Three meats were out for sample, Ciccioli, or braised scraps of lean pork meat and skin, seasoned with garlic and rosemary; a delicious salami of “three peppers”, and prosciutto cotto, a treat I have a hard time passing up in any context. Terry, the staff on hand, gave me my box and went through it with me, describing all of the products and the best ways to use them. He was really affable, and maybe it was the weather but everybody seemed really happy to be in a room surrounded by tasty salted pig parts at 10:00 a.m. on a Saturday.

There weren’t a lot of people there so early, but I imagine it becomes a little bit of a scene on “salumi Saturdays”. I really recommend checking it out! The box, by the way, came with a fennel-brown sugar salami (amazing), coppa di testa (head cheese, my first ever, so still waiting for sandwich time), capocollo (cured meat from the pig’s neck), and Italian sausages, which I roasted last night and served with cassoulet-style cannellini beans and Happy Boy farms rainbow chard, purchased from the Noe Valley Farmer’s market while dodging three strollers and a pack of dogs.