Make a pig of yourself at Lola's Roast to Spring

Jamey Fader rolls out the barrel at Lola.

For the third annual "Picnic of the Pig: A Roast to Spring," which runs from 5 to 11 p.m. on May 5, Lola chefs Duane Walker and Drew Hardin, along with Brandon Foster of Vesta Dipping Grill, will not just roast pigs, but serve up meat up in everything from pork head terrine with pickled serrano escabeche and pork rind to a smoked pork doughnut -- and everything will be sold a la carte, unless you go for the $40 "whole hog" platter.

"The pig roast is all based on a lot of craft," explains Jamey Fader, culinary director of Big Red F restaurants, which includes Lola, where he was the founding chef and is a part-owner. "We didn't want to just cook a pig and serve pieces of pig...we wanted to work from snout to tail. The menu that night transforms into a celebration of the pig."

And Lola has just the thing to wash that porker down: Republic Tequila's Rested Blanco, which resides in a giant oak barrel that's been hanging over the bar for the past week, after being shipped in pieces to Denver, then rebuilt.

Austin Nall, a former Lola sous, is now with Republic, and he and Fader worked together to create a barrel service for the bar, which will debut on Cinco but continue long after. "We always wondered how to do our own tequila," Fader says, and this turned out to be the perfect solution. "It's going to be interesting how the taste evolves after sitting in that puppy for a while," he notes. And in the interest of science, he took a taste yesterday morning -- and no doubt will do some comparative tasting tomorrow.

In addition to pork and tequila, there will also be live music from the Big Motif and The Congress. Find more info at www.loladenver.com.