Food & Wine has showered some of its list-love on Smoke's Tim Byres, naming his smoked pork jowls with pickles a best restaurant dish of 2010.
As Editor Kate Krader describes the dish: "He slowly smokes cured pork jowl over pecan wood and serves thin slices of the luscious meat as an appetizer with as many pickled ingredients as possible, including house-made half-sour pickles, pickled chiles and pickled mustard seeds stirred into the blackstrap-molasses garnish."
Byres calls the preparation "bacon to the bacon power."
Of the 10 dishes on the year-end list, seven hail from west of the Mississippi. Other restaurants represented include Scottsdale's FnB, Salt Lake City's Forage and San Francisco's Saison. Perhaps surprisingly for an industry's that's just starting to emerge from a bacon haze, Byres' contribution is one of only two showcased pork dishes. Two of the dishes, including a vegan salumi plate from Gather in Berkeley, are made without any meat at all.
The list will appear in December's issue.