Shortly before 5:30 on a recent Sunday evening, about 15 people were milling around outside Joseph Leonard, waiting for the immensely popular neighborhood restaurant at 170 Waverly Place in the Village to open.
Sure, seats inside the warm, candlelit space aren’t easy to come by (reservations aren’t taken and there’s often a waitlist just for a barstool). But a quick survey of would-be diners quickly revealed another reason for the bustling early-bird crowd. As one simply put it: “I love pork!”
Welcome to “Cochon Sundays” — a weekly whole-hog event in which chef James McDuffee butchers an entire pig, then offers up its myriad parts in an array of appetizer and entree specials. Each time a special sells out, a staff member erases its corresponding part from a pig drawn on a chalkboard.
“It’s a lot easier to make a special out of a pork chop or a pork loin than it is to do something out of a nose, tail, ears and feet. We’re using the whole animal,” says owner Gabriel Stulman, who procures each week’s pig with the help of Basis Farm to Chef, an organization that connects small farms and restaurants.
Chef McDuffee then butchers the animal in-house — but not before naming it first. “This week was Scarlett. She was a big girl!” he says of the 135-pound pig from Bornt Family Farms.
According to McDuffee, the only part of the pig that’s proving to be a tough sell is the head: “We’ve tried [head cheese] a few different ways — we’ll keep trying it — but it’s the hardest one.”
Still, considering that the feet are sometimes the first to disappear from the chalkboard — after all, there are only four of them! — diners aren’t all that squeamish. And less than 20 minutes after opening, nearly every seat in the restaurant is taken.
“I’d probably suck on the ear. If he cooks the snout, I’ll probably eat it,” says Julio, a 40-year-old lawyer who was eyeing the crispy pork belly with picholine olive risotto, slivered almonds, arugula and Parmesan ($20).
Indeed, it would seem that the only person in the restaurant with any reservations is Stulman, the owner, who grew up in a kosher household. “I guess I have a little bit of guilt,” says Stulman. “I would consider myself a fairly observant Jew — but that’s one part me and the Book see differently.”
carla.spartos@nypost.comx.