Wilkes-Barre is about to smell like smoke, pork, and bad decisions (in the best way)…
Bacon Week launches today at Anthracite Café, and if you’ve lived in Wilkes-Barre long enough to know what February feels like, gray sky, road salt, and the kind of cold that makes your knees speak in ancient languages, you already understand the appeal.
Because Bacon Week isn’t just a menu.
It’s a counterattack.
Running Feb. 4 through Feb. 7, Anthracite Café (804 Scott St., Wilkes-Barre) is firing up its 13th Annual Bacon Week, a short-run, reservation-driven event that turns a neighborhood restaurant into something closer to a winter ritual. They’re telling people to call now for reservations, which is always the first sign this isn’t a casual “swing by” situation.
This is planned indulgence. Strategic gluttony. A few nights where the cold gets drowned out by smoke, fat, and the kind of joy you can only justify when the sun goes down at 5 PM.
And honestly?
It’s perfect.
Bacon Week: not subtle, not restrained, and definitely not apologizing…
There are restaurants that roll out a “bacon special” the way someone adds a scarf to their outfit, safe choice, polite move, nothing to write home about. That’s not what Anthracite does.
Bacon Week at Anthracite is a full takeover. A menu that leans so hard into one idea that it becomes a personality, loud, heavy, ridiculous, and intentionally fun. The lineup is divided into categories like First Eats, Swine Inspired Stuff, a full slate of Bacon Week Dinners, and homemade bacon-infused desserts, all of it designed to be indulgent and completely unconcerned with moderation.
This isn’t “refined.”
It’s trying to win.
And this year’s menu reads like it was written by someone who got snowed in with a smoker, a case of maple syrup, and zero interest in doing anything halfway.
There are Pork Belly Burnt Ends, cubed pork belly house-smoked with raw honey, Canadian maple syrup, and a brown sugar base rub that turns the whole thing into what the menu proudly calls “bacon candy.” There’s Swine of the Sea, sea scallops and jumbo shrimp wrapped in smoked bacon, drizzled with zesty BBQ sauce like it was designed to silence every inner voice that ever told you to “take it easy.”
And then there’s Chubbie Cheeks: house-smoked hog cheeks, pan-seared with onions, garlic, and bacon bits, the kind of dish that sounds like a cartoon insult but eats like something ancient and satisfying, like it’s been feeding working people since long before anyone was counting macros.
Then it gets louder.
The menu includes Fat Pig Grenades, fresh jalapeños stuffed with bacon-infused cream cheese, wrapped in peppered ground sausage, wrapped again in smoked bacon, then smoked with house rub and BBQ sauce. It’s not just a dish. It’s a dare. The kind of food that makes grown adults laugh before taking the first bite, because everyone at the table knows what’s coming.
And that right there?
That’s the point.
The dish that screams “Wilkes-Barre”: Piggy Wiggy Pierogies…
If you want the true local heart of Bacon Week, the dish that feels like the coal region itself wrote it in a moment of inspiration, it’s Piggy Wiggy Pierogies.
Mini potato-and-cheese pierogies pan-fried in bacon oil, topped with maple bacon crumbs, chopped scallions, and cheddar cheese, served with bacon-infused sour cream.
That isn’t cuisine.
That’s identity.
It’s Wilkes-Barre on a plate: practical, indulgent, funny as hell, and deeply unconcerned with what anyone in a bigger city might call “too much.”
Because here’s the thing about this region: we’ve never been shy about comfort food. We come from people who worked hard jobs in hard places. And when it’s cold out, we don’t nibble, we commit.
Where Bacon Week fits in Wilkes-Barre’s dining scene…
Wilkes-Barre has always understood something that trend-chasing food cities forget: restaurants aren’t just places you eat. They’re places you go. They’re where you meet people, where you take your parents, where you celebrate, where you crawl out of winter and remind yourself you’re still alive.
And Bacon Week fits into that ecosystem like a yearly holiday that no one put on the official calendar, but everyone knows it’s coming.
That’s why the event works.
Wilkes-Barre responds to tradition and momentum. Weekly specials are normal. Feature nights are expected. But a finite run where the entire restaurant leans into a single theme like it’s a mission? That becomes a thing. Something you text your friends about. Something you plan for. Something you treat like a small victory in the middle of the winter stretch.
And the timing isn’t accidental.
February is famously one of the hardest months for restaurants, post-holiday slump, ugly weather, short days, fewer people casually drifting out for dinner. Bacon Week turns that slump into a reason to leave the house. It gives winter teeth. For a few nights, it makes Wilkes-Barre feel busy again.
Anthracite Café was built for this kind of chaos…
Anthracite Café has always had the right personality for Bacon Week.
It’s a scratch-kitchen spot with beer-garden energy (it also recently announced its first-ever house beer), food made to satisfy, not pose. This isn’t dainty cooking. It’s comfort food done with confidence, the kind of place that knows how to feed people who want to feel a meal in their bones.
That’s why Bacon Week doesn’t feel bolted on.
It feels like Anthracite’s spirit turned up to its loudest setting.
And the event isn’t just appetizers and novelty sandwiches. The Bacon Week dinner lineup is legitimately heavy-hitting.
There’s Piggy Hiding in the Grass, center-cut sous vide porkloin, pan-seared and served on a bed of maple bacon risotto topped with sautéed spinach, bacon, and onions. There’s Pig Farmers Pastie, an oven-baked flaky pie crust stuffed with sausage, southern pulled pork, bacon, potatoes, carrots, celery, and onions, finished with pan gravy, the kind of dish that sounds like it could keep you alive through a blizzard.
And then there’s the charmingly excessive Hog Heaven Clucker: a fresh chicken cutlet stuffed with hot sausage, pulled pork, chopped bacon, green onions, and cheddar cheese, served over bacon-infused mashed potatoes, wrapped in bacon, covered with cheese sauce.
That isn’t dinner.
That’s a weather event.
Even the desserts refuse to behave: chocolate-covered bacon strips, maple bacon vanilla cupcakes, and bacon brownie à la mode. There’s also a note to ask your server about Bacon Week drink features, which is restaurant code for: we’re not done messing with you yet.
The bottom line…
Thirteen years in, Bacon Week isn’t “a promotion.”
It’s a Wilkes-Barre winter ritual, built on pork, smoke, maple sweetness, and the deeply local belief that if the weather’s going to be miserable, the food shouldn’t be.
So yes: Bacon Week is back. It runs Feb. 4 through Feb. 7, and if you want in, you’ll want to plan ahead, because this is one of those weeks where “we’ll figure it out” turns into “we should’ve called earlier.”
Call Anthracite Café at 570-822-4677, show up hungry, and prepare to leave with the kind of satisfied shame that only a true coal-country feast can give you.
