[What You Should Order At...] Union Hall

WHAT YOU SHOULD ORDER AT...is a recurring column designed in kind for your opinionated asses and our lazy asses. When the mood strikes, we pick one Park Slope resto and recommend our favorite dish. Are we right? Are we wrong? YOU KNOW YOU WANNA WEIGH IN.

When I think of my five reasons for going to Union Hall, they rank as follows:

#1 - Alcohol, #2 - Atmosphere/Females, #3 - Shows, #4 - Food, #5 - Bocce.

I just don't get it. Bocce? What is this? An Italian neighborhood? BOCCE IS NUMBER FIVE. BEHIND FOOD.

Since Union Hall's opening back in 2006, I've spent many a spell within its bookish confines. I've smoked butts in the courtyard area. FiPS has held the occasional meeting/gathering there. I even brought my stuffed monkey to one meeting & started a lapsed column about it. One random summer night, I ended up working the door downstairs at a burlesque show, where I accidentally stamped some guy's shirt sleeve. In my defense, dude was wearing cufflinks, so he was kinda asking for it. Over time, in my dozens of visits there, I've probably ordered food two or three times. It isn't that the food's bad, It's just sort of meh...better-than-200-Fifth Bar food.

As such, until this week, I couldn't have named a damn thing on the Union Hall food menu. Early Tuesday evening, I stopped by briefly, sat at the bar and grabbed a beer. The food menu was right there and I was sick of looking at my phone, so I perused the front of the menu and flipped it over. On the back, a single item jumped out at me, an apparently recent addition to the menu: BACON ($8). The description: "A basket of crispy bacon." The bartender confirmed that said item was in fact a pile of bacon in a basket. It sounded about right. How different was it really from popcorn or mixed nuts or any other such bar snack?

Unfortunately, and I don't know how I can say this without feeling ashamed, but, on that particular night, I wasn't in the mood for bacon. I know. It sounds crazy. I swear I'm an American citizen.

Fortunately, last night, I got off work and returned to order a basket o' bacon.

When it arrived, I had twenty-or-so strips of thin, crispy bacon sitting in a basket on the bar top before me. I dug in. The bacon was light and on the edge of crumbly. At one point, the bartender commented on how they baked it instead of frying it. She could always smell it cooking from the kitchen below.

I got through ten slices of bacon before my shame-combo of gluttony and heart blockage set in. The bartender assured me it was ok to take home leftovers. That's exactly what I did.

Before I left Union Hall, I made sure to send the lady friend a text informing her that I was BRINGING HOME THE BACON. It was my best joke of 2014 thus far.

In short, for $8, you should totally order the basket o' bacon next time you're at Union Hall. Maybe you can even find an available companion to split the basket with you. No friends? No worries. You can just go there one night and order a basket of bacon to go. For $8, you'll have twenty slices of bacon, none of which you had to worry about cooking your damn self. You can bring it home & throw it on a sandwich. You can throw it to your dog. You can throw it at your breedling. Say you're at Union Hall late night and you’re fuckin' wasted. You can totally take care of a good portion of the next morn's hangover breakfast whilst still boozin' it up. "PUT THAT BACON ON MY TAB!"

Don't let all the hipster bacon tattoos and excessive bacon memes of the last five years intimidate you. Just order the fucking bacon.

Read way more from Shawn at eatdrinksnack.com and eatdrinktaco.com.