Cultural Expedition: Porketta Bingo

I’m going to explain a game that many of you will not likely have ever played…. Porketta Bingo. Porketta is a fatty, soft cut of pork that is delicious shredded and seasoned on a sourdough bun. I forgot to get a photo of it while we were there, but the Wikipedia article in the link is pretty accurate. Sorry, vegetarian friends! You may not want to click. I promise I ate vegetables later that day.

My cousin is getting married this summer, and will have a fun-filled bachelorette getaway in Las Vegas. But for those us who couldn’t do Vegas (some of her friends were pregnant, some of us couldn’t afford it) we had a mini bachelorette party in my hometown of Sudbury, Ontario- a small northern city known for it’s mining, hockey, and currently the only place in the world where Porketta Bingo is played. Porketta Bingo events are usually fundraisers, and the one we went to was for the local Lion’s club.

It has similar rules of classic bingo, only with playing cards. Should your cards get called (only horizontal rows of cards can win) you yell, “PORKETTA!!!” if you accidentally yell “Bingo!!” the entire bar chants ‘You F***ed Up!! You F***ed Up!!” Needless to say, it’s not a family-friendly environment, and drinking is a key element to Porketta Bingo. Once you win, you can choose a porketta sandwich, or some meat from a display like this:

And when they check your cards, they confirm that you have won by the announcer saying, “Yup, that’s a good porketta,” which cracked me up every time. Then we would hammer out hands on the table and chant, “she’s a winner!!!” Oddly, my cousin, the lady of the hour, didn’t win at all- so she got a mystery bag, which is what they give to the ‘losers’. It had a postcard from Toronto in it:

Lila did come along for brunch, before we went to porketta bingo. We all put on feather boas (which you can see in the top photos), and a little one was brought for her to wear too, but they were apparently terrifying and she promptly burst into tears. She wouldn’t even let me wear one, it was just too scary. But after we took off the boas, she calmed down, and then happily played with her farm animals and brunch:

apparently horses and yellow donkeys love sausage and cantaloupe.