'Can we make it ourselves…?' This is always the first question we ask. Can we make our own mustard? Can we make kombucha? And bacon; if we can make bacon, can we butcher a pig? (…) During lobster season there is lobster. During truffle season there is truffle. There's always foie gras,” according to the website of restaurant Pig & Rye in Tilburg. Oh please, Pig & Rye, do tell me more…
Pig and Rye is the restaurant of the British Luc Martin, who moved to Tilburg for love. There he started a sourdough bakery in his own shed and later a lunch shop with much-sung pastrami sandwiches and burgers. And gained fame with incredibly attractive pictures of tempting pieces of meat and golden brown burger buns that shine on the social media. If you like good meat, good bread and caviar, then Luc Martin is your dream man (at least, his online persona on Instagram – I don't know whether he also puts his glasses down at home).
We can also have dinner on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And that dinner menu looks damn good. They describe their style as “a particular focus on complicated French technique, trashy American fast food and making every single menu item from scratch.” And that translates into dishes such as fried cod with braised oxtail and Périgueux sauce and foie gras torchon with anchovies from Ortiz. A menu like this is reading material for me: I read it at home for pleasure.
Pig and Rye is located in a stately brick mansion on Nieuwlandstraat. A cool balance has been found inside by combining the classic elements of the building pop culture and modern design: late nineteenth-century ceiling ornament with a sleek, white designer lamp attached to it; old-fashioned tiled mantelpiece with Star Wars figure and black and white photo of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. This style is also continued on the table by presenting rough dishes on fancy porcelain plates with a floral motif, and fries on a decorative metal dish.
We have to accept a small inhospitality – a very reluctant glass of tap water after a long car journey while choosing an aperitif (“we don't actually do that… but okay”) – and a slight disappointment – unfortunately the menu on the website shows not to be the current menu, especially in the main courses section it is a lot better today. But a more than decent negroni – with a nice bitter chocolate undertone from the Carpano Antica Formula vermouth – and a plate of creamy, fat chorizo and plump slices of morcilla make up for a lot.
Wet snow
The entrees are almost all attractive and well executed. Nicely sour steak tartare with a big kick, on good toast finished with grated, smoked bone marrow – the latter gives that disgustingly satisfying fatty richness of a full bite of marrow, without the actual heaviness, because it disappears like sleet on your tongue . The shrimp cocktail is exactly what it should be: lots of sweet Dutch shrimps, with lettuce and thousand island dressing as a spicy cocktail sauce 2.0.
The dough around the pate is compact and greasy (that's a good thing). In the loose pork farce, with a daring amount of parsley, float a perfect circle of foie terrine and, beneath it, a crimson red duck breast, making the slice of pâté en croûte seem to smile at us like a Cyclops with full lips – the whole thing tastes just as cheerful. The zucchini flower tempura is cleanly fried, the wild garlic mayo is deliciously sour like tartar sauce – together it screams that spring has sprung. With it we drink an orange gewürztraminer (Domaine des Ourobores) that has a somewhat cidery nose, like a farmer's stable that has been smeared with apricot jam, but in the mouth it is tight and layered, slightly bitter with a bit of cape currant. So far so good.
The first cracks appear in the burrata (which spreads beautifully like a poached egg) in baba ganoush – the latter is clearly freshly rolled and beautifully smokey, but contains so much raw garlic that we literally taste it everywhere for the rest of the evening. And the bubble bursts with the main courses. The agnolotti (serrated pasta pillows) filled with pistachio and spinach are incredibly salty, the pasta is chewy where two layers meet, the parmesan sauce is winey and watery like crazy cheese fondue. The lamb is very tasty (and served quite medium rare, I like it), but the dish as a whole – with some lamb gravy, a pile of peas and a lonely white asparagus, about which there is little else to say – is underwhelming for 28 euros. The (well-fried, home-cut) fries are made with a crazy sweet mixture of salt and maple syrup; the lettuce is four quarters of little gem, only dressed from the top with some mayo.
Pig and Rye is (in principle) a thing close to my heart, I would have liked to have handed out four balls. But unfortunately the disappointing main courses tonight do not allow that. At the same time, based on the starters and that online sample menu, I would bet that you could eat well here all evening at any other time.
If you go (and I don't advise against it) and you still have a spot left, consider the baked Alaska. A sickly sweet, but enchantingly satisfying attack on the cardiovascular system: a sticky, compact brownie with chocolate ice cream, covered with a voluptuous mantle of burnt Italian meringue, freshened with lime. A truly American coup de grace to roll out with. Although he meant something completely different, in my head I hear the recently deceased country artist Toby Keith: “We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way.”
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