50 Shades of Delicious: 2 Chewsy for the Catwalk

Cochon is the French word for pig and or the sound a little piglet makes. Cochon 555  is a story of pigs and 5's.  This year marks the fifth anniversary of this traveling culinary circus (although our first to attend) which strives to promote the sustainable farming of heritage breed pigs.  The event was held at the Cedarbrook Lodge  which is an urban oasis hidden right by Seatac airport.  It used to be owned by WaMu back in their heyday and used as a corporate conference center.  Now, it is owned by the Wright family (owners of the Space Needle). The competition pits chefs cooking five different heritage (more on that below) breeds of pigs with the goal to use the entire 200 pound pig snout to tail and everything in between to create their menus.  The Seattle St. Patrick's day stop on the circus tour had bonus action though- a sixth chef was added along with Mark Bodinet from Cedarbrook Lodge's Copperleaf Restaurant who cooked another pig BBQ...

The age old battle for foodie city supremacy in the Northwest took to the kitchen this spring.  Now if you don't live in either Portland or Seattle let us set the table for this epic battle.  Seattle is home of Starbucks and a coffee shop on each corner, grunge music, Eastside techies working at Microsoft or a wireless company (who keep Starbuck's in business), engineers building airplanes at Boeing and the iconic Space Needle.  Portland definitely gets the nod for advanced city transportation (something that Seattle can't seem to figure out), taking eco-friendly to an entirely new level, bikes, microbreweries, roses, kicked-up sneaks (home of Nike) and who can pass up the guilt-free no tax shopping. With the recent spotlight being placed on Portland with the hit IFC series Portlandia (written by and starring Fred Armisen (SNL) and Carrie Brownstein (Wild Flag vocalist/guitarist)), Seattle had to up the anti. One of our favorite restaurants Matt's in the ...