El Puerco de Oro: Jamon Iberico de Bellota - Pastoral review

For all of my supposed food-lovingness, this place had the ability to sticker shock me - and I am a serious Whole Foods apologist, so impressing me with scary gourmand prices takes some doing. Here's how it went down....

So, I was at home, watching No Reservations in Spain - not that one one, but the other one. I know this is surprising. Anyways...

So Anthony Bourdain and this Spanish dude were sitting in some chiaroscuroly lit scene, grubbing and singing the praises of this ham that still had a fucking hoof attached to it! I mean, damn! Just a big ass hoof just ON there and they were slicing off pieces, cramming it in their mouths and rolling their eyes back in swine-induced ecstasy.
And I was like:
If I'm ever in Spain, Ima gonna get me some of that.

Then, the next day, after roaming the loop hungry for a while, I ended up smack in front of this place.

Beautiful little shop with a great collection of cheeses and meats and wines. The sandwich menu sound goods and has the potential to be super duper incredibly awesome, but are kind of inconsistent in the end product - heavy on the bread, light on the meat and cheese, a little dry. But they're pretty good and I ate mine all gone.

After my sandwiches, I perused their cases, as I am likely to do in such situations and then...

Then - I see this ham - no hoofs or anything, but it still drew me to it. It was just a really pretty piece of meat, dark and purpleyish and just...same Bourdain-looking ham.
And I was all:
Ima gonna get me some of that.

So I asked for a few slices, just like three or four since I'd just eaten and just wanted a taste. And the chick was like - You want like three or four slices of this one?, kind of worried sounding and odd and I was like yes, is that okay, and she was like yeah, that's okay, with a funny look and I was like, to myself, maybe I should get more? Like am I wasting her time with my bullshit baby sized order or something? And so then I also got a couple of slices of some duck salami, because that sounded like some impressive foodie bullshit that I could cop to having experienced and shit, if ever I'm at such a dinner party or what have you where such foodie testifying may be required.

So then she rings up my four thin slices of ham and three circles of duck salami and it comes to almost $20. Four pieces of ham, mind you, almost paper thin, and three pieces of salami, about the size of a quarter each. And then she was like - oh, wait, that's not the right price, and I was like - pssht, girl, obviously! And then she was like, that will be more like $18 and the soundtrack that follows me around in life was like Everybody Ha-yates Tina...waaaaaamp waaaaaamp.... (Tragic! TRAGIC!!)

It was $119 a pound. Turned out it was jamon iberico de bellota - free range spanish pigs that spend their whole lives grazing only on acorns. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jam%C3%B3n_ib%C3%A9rico

It was musty, nutty, earthy, almost cheesy with a complexity I was almost baffled by. And it melted in my mouth. I mean, I know that people say that things melted in their mouths all the time, but I've never really had that happen, except with like meringues and Pop Rocks. It felt like it almost dissolved. If that is ham, what in the fuck have I been "experiencing" my whole life?

Was it worth it? Yes, and probably even more so than my kind of just-okay sandwich. I loved being surprised, both by something I can't buy many places in this country.

I will have to restrain myself, pretty much forever, from coming to Pastoral with cracky urges and buying the fixins for a $100 sandwich - hell, we haven't even gotten to cheeses.

But I think it still would have been better with the hoof.

Pastoral 53 E Lake StChicago, IL 60601(312) 658-1250