A gander at the distribution of rave reviews on Yelp and a peek at the Anthony Bourdain video of this place convinced me that Au Pied de Cochon would be a memorable experience.\n\nAnd oh, was it memorable.\n\nService was slow and perhaps more insultingly, indifferent; we continually had to flag different waitstaff down to get, variously, bread, drink, etc because our waitress was busy walking past us to get between her other tables and treated us as if we didn't exist. At the end of the meal, we successfully accosted her to ask for the check, and she promptly disappeared again for 30 minutes before we complained to someone who was equally indifferent to our plight but at least gave us the bill so that we could leave.\n\nWhat was the true let-down, however, was the food. Knowing this place had a menu built on very fatty and rich foods, I thought I was prepared. I ordered the pied de cochon because, well, the place is called the pied de cochon. What arrived must have been a pied + an entire flank + slabs of duck liver + several onions drenched in sticks of butter de cochon, dumped unceremoniously in a giant deep dish. I entered into a very meta space in which I started wondering whether the volume of the food, if stuffed into a plastic bag, would exceed the volume of my head, and what the percentage weight of my own pied was to the weight of this pied. Concluding that I would surely win a Darwin award for dying from complications of gastric bypass surgery if I tried to down this dish (because this pied sure as hell was not going to bypass by itself), I took 4 bites and called it a -very disappointing- night.\n\nAnd then the dilemma of what to do with the remains, which constituted a largely untouched dish. I considered dragging them home with me to make 10 gallons of stock, but since home is a 12 hour Amtrak ride away and my freezer really doesn't have that kind of spare capacity, I took a moment to apologize to the pig for a waste of a life, and said adios.\n\nIt is actually beyond my comprehension how one person could eat this dish. The sheer amount of food and fat transcends mere excess and enters into the realm of the grotesque. Perhaps my rating would be different if I had tried another dish...but alas I have zero incentive to return.