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Fed up with how often bacon sticks its tongue in chocolate's ear these days? So is Xocolatl de David's David Briggs... sort of. Having also done a pig's blood chocolate, he's moved on to chicharrones – a.k.a. fried pork skins, rinds or "cracklins." The Portland chocolatier's Chicharron bar includes 68% chocolate from Bolivia, fleur de sel, Viridian Farms Calabrian chile powder and a signature ingredient from San Francisco butcher Ryan Farr of 4505 Meats, who is so well known for his cracklins that his Twitter handle is @chicharrones.
"I've been doing a bacon chocolate ganache and bacon caramel as long as, if not longer, than anybody," says Briggs, who was certainly ahead of Vosges on the porcine front. "So when I started doing bars, everybody's like 'You gotta do a bacon bar now!' I thought it was kind of too little too late... unless I could just totally come up with something different."
Briggs says the overall effect is like a porky salty spicy Nestlé Crunch; the limited edition bar has only been available thus far in Boston and New York, as part of a "Golden Ticket" promotion with the Cochon 555 tour, which hits Atlanta next (and comes to Portland May 16). But Briggs expects to make a dozen bars available in PDX at Meat Cheese Bread TODAY (Friday, April 9); check his Facebook page or Twitter to find out for sure... and then hope he perfects those Lardo "M&Ms".
--Jason Cohen