Poor Tom. He’s so desperate for good food and company that he went back to The Red Hen again the next day. I couldn’t resist another TB post but am I the only one who thinks the photo of the chocolate appears disturbingly similar to that of the sausage. Are you sure that was dessert, Tom?

“Weren’t you in here yesterday?”

The place was empty at the tail end of lunchtime. I sat at the kitchen counter and watched a virgin sausage-maker get his pork legs; browsed the chef’s copy of the lovely and mind-boggling Alinea cookbook; talked about restaurants and Texas and heavy metal (naturally the most dapper server in all of Rockbridge county could very recently be found playing lead guitar in the awesome and savagely heavy Baroness).

Then I heard eight of the more lovely words in the English language: “You want some pork belly on that burger?”

I do desserts seldom enough that tired classics remain pretty interesting for me. So soft chocolate, olive oil, lemon curd, toast, salt, and choco-dust was basically delicious, dizzying science fiction.

Why have I not been salting chocolate all this time? If this dish was any indication, you should dip the nearest candy bar in soy sauce right now.