Limited Cracklin' Xocolatl de David Available TODAY!!!

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