Pork Belly at Monsoon

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I delivered 40-something pounds of pork belly to Monsoon yesterday. They serve it at Monsoon East and Monsoon. One server was reading up on the Mangalitsa. Someone had printed out this page.

She explained that in the last week, she'd received many calls from people, asking if they were serving the belly from the Mangalitsa pigs. Some had even ordered it to go. So when I showed up, Johnny, the chef, said he wanted all the belly.

The belly they are using are from Mangalitsa-sired pigs. The purebred Mangalitsa belly would be all fat, like this bacon. That's too much fat.

Although I run a breed-oriented pig business and am very aware of the difference between a purebred Mangalitsa and an F1, or the 75% Mangalitsa pigs pictured above I have to respect the fact that most people don't care about the pedigree of their pork belly, as long as it tastes fantastic. So if they call it "Mangalitsa belly" or "Wooly Pigs belly", that's them just using a convenient shorthand.