Use Your Head: Pigging Out with Gilt Club's Chris Carriker

Welcome back to Chef in the Kitchen, a recurring Eater photo feature where we boldly go where few diners have gone before — into Portland restaurant kitchens — to get a sneak peek of the chef du jour hard at work.

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[Avila, 6/2/11]

Warning: This one's not for the squeamish (particularly for fans of Babe. Seriously). Gilt Club chef Chris Carriker is known for his experimental nose-to-tail dining, but thanks to the popularity of dishes like Gilt's pig head mortadella, Carriker often finds himself ordering more heads than whole animals. Eater snuck in the kitchen to watch how the dish is made — Carriker strips all the meat from the pig skull, then combines it with a mixture of pistachios, black truffles, pancetta, peppercorns, and spices before stuffing it all back into the pig skin.

And just for fun, with the extra fleshy goodness, Carriker whipped up a plate of pig face confit tacos, featuring a housemade hot sauce (roasted seranos and scotch bonnet peppers), radishes, cilantro, lime, and diced red onion. So: Pig face, served two ways.
· Gilt Club [Official site]
· All Previous Chef in the Kitchen Coverage [Eater PDX]