Now well-established amongst Sydney’s bacon-loving diners, Cuckoo Callay’s Bacon Ooze Festival is back with an entirely new menu for the fourth consecutive year. You’ve got until the last week of June to head along to either (or both, do both) the popular café’s Newtown or Surry Hills outposts and dig into a specially created menu celebrating all things bacon, highlighting free range Australian pork in very, very playful ways.
How playful? The inventive café will be using bacon in some very interesting ways over the next few weeks. Expect options like the Piggie Smalls burger which stacks three types of pork (pork mince pattie, char-grilled chorizo and maple bacon jam) with Mexican flaming cheese, pork crackling and chipotle aioili in between; the Under My Umburatta, a deep-fried, bacon-crumbed burrata with a 63° egg oozing over char-grilled zucchini, kale, zaatar and olive tapenade with fennel and herbs; and the I Like Pig Butts and I Cannot Lie (notice a theme here?) which uses coco pops to crumb oozing salted caramel French toast with banana and bacon ice cream, chocolate soil, maple-glazed bacon and mascarpone.
Those who really want to dig in to the menu should get the bacon tasting board: streaks of triple-smoked bacon, sticky maple bacon, bourbon-fuelled double-smoked bacon and an exclusive triple-smoked air-dried bacon made just for Cuckoo Callay by local heroes Blackforest Smokehouse, hanging from a miniature clothesline. You’ll also get some creamy bacon aioli and sweet bacon jam in case that’s not enough bacon for you.
Perhaps most exciting is a massive twist on one of Cuckoo’s most beloved dishes. The Bacon MacDaddy – which is basically a toasted croissant topped with triple-smoked crispy bacon, a 63° egg, bacon mac ‘n’ cheese, tomato relish and fried shallots – is going to be supersized in collaboration with The Grounds of Alexandria, who are providing the café with their giant 45cm croissants. It’s but one of several collaborations which Cuckoo Callay will roll out throughout the festival, and that particular one will be available on Saturday 26th May.
Cuckoo Callay’s Bacon Ooze Festival
Wednesday 4 April – Tuesday 26 June
Cuckoo Callay Newtown
BC1 Newtown Train Station, Newtown
Mon-Fri 6am-4pm | Sat 8am-4pm | Sun: 8am-3pm
02 9557 7006
Cuckoo Callay Surry Hills
413-415 Crown Street, Surry Hills
Mon-Fri 7am-4pm | Sat 8am-4pm | Sun: 8am-3pm
02 8399 3679
Image: Steven Woodburn.
———-