Bacon, Family-Style

A cardiac-arresting culinary pleasure!:

And this month, we saw the unveiling of breaded, deep-fried bacon -- dressed in country gravy -- at Risque Cafe in Lake View.

If we know anything about these strips of cured and smoked meat, it's this: Bacon is the new black.

...At Risque Cafe, 3419 N. Clark, country-fried bacon ($6) is on the appetizer menu. Raw bacon strips are put in an egg wash, dredged in a heavily peppered flour and then deep fried in vegetable oil, says chef Andrew Niemeyer.

A white gravy is served on the side. What you have is something that sounds very much like chicken fried steak, which fits in well with the barbecue smoke shack theme Risque is going for.

"It's something my friends and I tossed around when I was in culinary school," says Niemeyer, a 2005 graduate of the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago. "Just hearing about it makes your heart skip a beat."