Not enough bacon for a place with bacon in the title

A tad late with the trend of cooking everything with bacon, Sweet Bacon opened its doors a couple of months ago in downtown Tijuana. They are located on the main road (Revolución) between 6th and 7th, across the street from Colectivo 9 (a food court with more than nine different restaurants), and next to Pueblito (an anarchy punk bar). The new restaurant is set to attract the millennial crowd.

I found Sweet Bacon completely empty on a Monday afternoon — the city itself was pretty quiet. The only two people sitting in the restaurant were the young owners, Gaby Giordano and Eric Guillermo. The chef stood at the ready, behind the open kitchen.

Everything on the menu has bacon, including the salads and desserts. The thin corridor has a long bench improvised with wooden planks and cement blocks along the wall with tables and simple chairs. The opposite wall has an open kitchen. The back wall of the restaurant reads "for bacon lovers and other food addicts" and the tables have "bacON, bacOFF" signs. The only thing the restaurant is missing are pictures of Kevin Bacon.

The appetizers are the most interesting choices: bacon bombs, stuffed mushrooms, potato skins, and bacon dip. The menu offers three types of burgers: sweet bacon, Sriracha stout bbq, and peanut butter. Because I've recently been eating too many burgers, I took a look at the entrées: chicken cordon bleu, whisky top sirloin, spaghetti Carbonara, and a grilled cheese. They also have soup/salad of the day.

Whiskey and meat are on my list of favorite things. However, with a price tag of 99 pesos (around $7), my guess was that the top sirloin wasn't going to be a prime grade meat. But I still went for it. Instead of getting the sides that came with the entrée, I asked to get the bacon bombs as a replacement. It only cost me $2 to replace the sides for the appetizer.

The bacon bombs were five cheesy potatoes on a wooden skewer wrapped in bacon with a stout bbq for dipping. They were fantastic.

The whiskey top sirloin, as expected, was not a prime cut from a good butcher. It had the look and the taste of a cheap supermarket meat, the kind used to prepare street tacos. It was topped with a sad and lonely piece of crispy bacon (also supermarket bought). The whiskey balsamic sauce rescued the piece of meat and gave it a good flavor to something that otherwise would have been miserable. Since it was happy hour, I accompanied my meal with two Tecates for 30 pesos ($2 for 2 beers).

After I was done, Gaby, one of the owners, approached me to ask how everything was. I didn't lie to her. "We did not want anything on the menu to be over 100 pesos," she said. "The chicken and the top sirloin is what we sell the least. We put it on the menu for the older generation; they are the only ones who order it." Gaby told me her vision of the place and gave me a taste of their BBQ Sriracha stout sauce and a bacon/coffee marmalade.

I went back to Sweet Bacon a week later, with an appetite for a burger. I ordered the BBQ Sriracha stout burger medium-well. The burger came with fries and a side of their concoction, an interesting mix of sweet and spicy. The stout gave it less viscosity but added little to the flavor (they used Minerva’s brew from Guadalajara — a different stout might improve it).

The meat was so juicy that the bottom bun was drenched (the bread seemed to be from Costco). For a place that focuses on bacon, I barely even tasted pork. I expected the burger to be bathed in their BBQ sauce, but found the burger to just be a regular one. I realized then that the side sauce was for me to pour on the burger al gusto. The fries were standard good. I asked for more of the sauce for my fries since it was the only interesting thing I tasted.