San Mateo couple’s Bacone making a squeal
July 9, 2009
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| Mmmm, bacon: Christian Williams, left, and Melissa Tillman enjoy their invention, the Bacone, at their home in San Mateo.Love it or hate it: A Gourmet magazine article suggested that few would be on the fence about their Bacone feelings. (Juan Carlos Pometta Betancourt/Special to the Examiner) |
SAN MATEO — When San Mateo resident Christian Williams decided to attend BaconCamp in San Francisco in March he had no idea he would walk away
a winner.
The 30-year-old self-described “techie” said he wanted to create something unique for the bacon-lovers’ convention.
What he came up with is known as the Bacone: three strips of bacon deep fried to make a cone shape, filled with a mixture of scrambled eggs, hash browns and cheese, and topped with biscuits and country gravy.
The breakfast-food concoction not only won the judges’ choice award, but also landed Williams an appearance on the Food Network and Gourmet magazine featured him in a story about what it called the Gross Food Movement.
“Maybe the Bacone sounds delicious to you. Maybe you’d sooner starve to death,” the writer wrote.
“This is just a low-brow breakfast,” Williams said. “It’s far from gourmet.”
Bacon is enjoying a surge in popularity recently, with fans of the pork product swarming to Web sites such as bacontoday.com and experimenting with tastes like bacon-flavored cocktails and chocolate-covered bacon.
Scott Kveton, BaconCamp judge and founder of bacn.com, a Portland, Ore.-based online store for bacon that also sells T-shirts, offers recipes and hosts a blog, had no idea of the meat’s popularity when he started the Internet site.
“People are crazy about bacon,” he said. “There’s an obvious market for it.”
When Kveton first saw the Bacone, he knew it would be the event’s winner.
“It was too damn funny. I’ve never seen anything close to it,” he said.
Williams’ appearance on the Food Network is during a new series featuring figure skater Brian Boitano. It’s scheduled to air in August. In the featured segment, Boitano comes to the Bay Area to check out the bacon craze and, in addition to the Bacone, spotlights the Bacontini.
Williams’ girlfriend, Melissa Tillman, co-creator of the Bacone, said it took many attempts before they settled on the final creation.
And although she doesn’t have it all that often, the first bite of salty bacon mixed with the eggs and country gravy reminds her how much she actually likes the Bacone.
“It’s the perfect size,” she said while biting into it like an ice cream cone. “And it has a little bit of everything in it.”
akoskey@sfexaminer.com
