Reston Station’s plaza is still a work in progress. On a typical weekday morning at the future mixed-use project at the Wiehle-Reston East Metro Station, there are commuters heading to and from Metro trains and construction workers taking a break from building the high-rise BLVD apartments.
Ed Hardy and his crew are also hard at work, smoking and curing fresh bacon and turning it into all things bacon-related, yummy and for sale at his trailer parked on the plaza.
Hardy, 39, who has worked in kitchens from New York’s Gramercy Tavern and Aquavit to, most recently, Rockville’s Quench, set up his new business, Bacon N Ed’s, about a month ago.
After the Silver Line opened in July, Hardy thought the plaza — which eventually is planned to have retail and restaurants — would be an excellent spot to open his own place. Since developer Comstock was thinking about the plaza as a flexible food and festival space, Hardy says he approached them to be the test case.
“Even a guy living in McLean can recognize a food desert when he sees one,” said Hardy of the end of the Silver Line.
He sunk nearly $40,000 into acquiring a trailer and outfitting it with what he needs to both cure bacon and incorporate it into both morning and afternoon treats.
Egg Meat Cheese Biscuit, $5 (Ham, Bacon, Sausage patty); and egg, tomato, black bean and arugula wrap, $6; a BLT of course, $8; Veggie Banh Mi $9; and a fig-and-bacon Pop-Tart, among others.
Joining native Virginian Hardy in the business is his wife, Francoise Villeneuve, who trained at the Culinary Institute of America and recently launched a confection line, Wiggly Leroux. Villeneuve’s cookies, hot chocolates and candy (stop by for a pumpkin spice marshmallow) are also for sale at the trailer.
Hardy is open from 6 to 10 a.m. and then again in the evening rush, but he is on the plaza curing bacon all day — about 25 lbs. a week.
He says he crowdsourced the cute business moniker through his Facebook friends. Some of the rejected names: Barely EDible and Ed’s Crustachella Discount Shrimp Wagon. Besides, he says, breakfast is his favorite meal of the day.<
Comstock spokeswoman Maggie Parker says she is pleased to have Bacon N Ed’s aboard.
“We are delighted to have a chef of Ed Hardy’s caliber operating a food truck on the Reston Station plaza,” she said, adding that the truck us “the first aspect of an exciting new retail concept in the works for delivery at Reston Station.
“Until full scale operations begin, Ed will be joined by other high quality food and service providers,” said Parker. “Stay tuned for more.”
