A Baconfest For The Rest of You

By Chuck Sudo in Food on Aug 18, 2010 5:20PM

Normally, when a press release hits the inbox titled "Press Release Inferno!", It's laughed at, marked as spam and forgotten. But when the subject of said inferno is a bacon cookoff that promises to "consume the city in flames most awesome!", it begs to be read, if only in the hopes that the author of the press release is Andrew W.K.

Matt Timms, a Brooklyn actor and writer who's hosted various cooking "takedowns" since 2003, is touring the country with a bacon-themed cookoff that hits Lincoln Hall on September 11. 20 local cooks will be tapped to make a bacon-themed dish for the cookoff; Timms is promising to provide all participants with "15 (pounds) of Hormel Black Label bacon" to cook with. If this feels like promnesia, it's because bacon-themed cookoffs are not unique in Chicago.

But Timms is rolling in, anyway, with $1500 worth of Wusthof knives, Anolon cookware and Microplane graters to give away for the winners. (I could use a new Anolon fry pan. Those pans are amazing!)

If you wish to participate as one of the lucky 20, e-mail Timms here. If you don't but want to see the traveling bacon circus at Lincoln Hall next month, it'll cost you $15. Here's hoping all the signage is designed in the same Iron Maiden font used in the image above.

Bacon Takedown, September 11, 1:30 p.m., Lincoln Hall (2424 N. Lincoln), all ages.