The Side Door @ Beacon: Roast Suckling Pig

I’ve documented several visits to Beacon’s lunchtime offshoot, The Side Door, in order to sample the cheeseburger, double dog, and even, yes, the Cobb salad. A new season brings change, and with that, another writeup from me.

The Side Door removed the double dog (sorry, Mr. Pink!) from the menu to make room for their pulled pork creation, elaborately known as the Roast Suckling Pig Sandwich. Early reports on the new sandwich complained about its size, but owner Waldy Malouf said he’d address that, so off I walked for the opportunity to sample the new lunch option.

I’m happy that I’m apparently taking a chunk of shredded baby pig back to my desk. Yum!

I eagerly dragged my lunch back to my office and opened ‘er up for photography. And yes, compared to what the early eaters complained about, this is a healthy-sized sandwich. It’s bigger than the standard hamburger-roll pulled-pork sandwiches seen all over the South (and at Big Apple BBQ every year), and in this lunch, it’s about the same price. But… that roll….

Still $10 this season, the meal includes the obligatory bag of chips and a quart of Tiger Tea (iced tea and lime juice). Also, as you can see, there’s a little cup of “Spicy sweet & sour sauce.”

Topped by a thin slice of deli pickle, and with “jalapeño slaw” underneath, the pulled pork sandwich even gets a bit of a toast to that sorry bun.

Roast Suckling Pig sandwich’s pork is moist, and not just because it’s lightly dressed with the sauce on its own. The slaw adds a nice crunch – some large slices of red onion combine with the red pepper, pickled jalapeno slices as well as cabbage, and I enjoyed the little bit of kick. That one big pickle on top does nothing, though, and while the bun had that tasty, slightly-sweet, fresh-baked taste, it was in tatters. Dipping in the sauce was a fail as a result.

Speaking of the sauce, the Spicy sweet & sour sauce tastes a bit like Chinese takeout sweet and sour, thinned with vinegar. It’s quite sweet, but with that vinegar kick.

I tried in vain to find a potato chip worthy of a picture. No Virgin Mary chips in there this day, sorry. And of course the Tiger Tea is still the same, very lime-y, but it’s been bumped to $2 a la carte (while cans of soda or bottled water dropped to $1). The cupcakes appear not to be coming back, but there are still cookies, four for a buck.

All in all, I was satisfied with the pulled pork as much as I am with the cheeseburger. I wish and hope that the bun was an anomaly, because the rest of the meal worked out so well. Beacon beefed porked out the sandwich to where I’m kinda hankering for one as I write this. It won’t beat my favorite places in North Carolina, but it’s one of the better vinegary pulled pork sandwiches you’ll find in town. It’s one more reason — with the burger, that makes two, three if you count the Tiger Tea separately — to visit The Side Door for lunch.