Scott and I made our way down to the riverfront park in Hudson for the first annual NY Bacon Fest!
We got there a little after 11am. This was the line for one (of the two) food trucks. Seeing this set the tone for the entire event. It was really crowded.
We got on line for the 333 Restaurant for some bacon rice krispies and chocolate covered bacon. Interesting. I don’t know if bacon really makes a difference in rice krisipe treats. But Scott and I really enjoyed the chocolate covered bacon.
Can’t go wrong with chewy, salty and sweet.
We wandered around and looked that the other tables while deciding what to eat next.
There was a goat cheese table that had samples of different kinds of beet and artichoke spreads on crackers with goat cheese. Really good! (not bacony, though.)
I wanted to try the bacon gelato, but they were out already. 
Bacon soap and candles! Seems a logical conclusion for bacon fat. I snagged a sample of bacon soap which did, in fact, smell like bacon! Neat.
We finally decided to get on line (about a 40 minute line..) for some BBQ from this place.
We got some bacon-wrapped jalapeno poppers..
.. and some kind of bacon wrapped stuffed sausage stuffed with bacon and cream cheese and covered in bbq sauce. It was unremarkable (but the bbq sauce was really good).
Scott was hungry. He liked it.
There was one table selling actual, bring-home-with-you bacon. I was surprised, seeing as how there are loads of farms in the area that sell bacon. We picked up some smoked buckboard bacon and some nitrate-free thick cut sliced bacon. We put the buckboard bacon into some salad and it was fabulous. A tiny hint of sweetness.
Overall, Bacon Fest seemed totally unprepared for the crowd it received. I hope the attention it got this year will bring more vendors and a larger space (and, obviously, bacon items after 12 for a 9-6 festival is probably a good idea.) We’ll try again next year.
After we finished up at Bacon Fest, we headed over the bridge to the Crossroads Brewery in Athens, New York. We haven’t been there yet and I’ve been keen to try their beer. I’m sort of a picky beer drinker. I’ve found a lot of beer that’s brewed local to me (Chatham, Brown’s) to be too watery for my tastes. Maybe it’s the person pouring or the restaurant’s failure to properly tap a beer, but every time I’ve had anything from either those breweries I’ve been unimpressed.
The beer at Crossroads, however, was fabulous. I thought the Outrage IPA rivaled Dogfish’s 90 minute IPA. Scott really enjoyed the Brick Row Red. We didn’t order food, but from a cursory glance over to other peoples’ plates it looked good. I saw mussels. I want mussels! We will definitely be back.
