Primehouse’s bacon candle
It’s been nearly four years since I first wrote about the sizzling trend of bacon, and presenting — only slightly tongue-in-cheek — my signature recipe for bacon-wrapped bacon. That was just after John Scalzi taped bacon to his cat.
Bacon was still going strong more than a year later, when Pilsen Chef Justin Hall (Fig Catering) and I had a little set-to on LTH Forum over his claim that bacon had become overdone. Of course, that was before the bacon and egg cocktail at Otom in the West Loop, before Chef Rick Gresh’s edible bacon candles at David Burke’s Primehouse in River North, before the launch of Baconfest Chicago and before Hall himself was cooking bacon dishes at Lincoln Park’s Green City Market.
So I’ve got to say that yes, the bacon thing has not only left the building, it’s blasted off the planet.
Where do you stand on bacon?
Bacon hasn’t just jumped the shark, it’s nuked the fridge.
As a garnish or flavor enhancer, I enjoy it. As a half-cooked, wiggly and slimy side, not so much.
I eat it gladly when it comes in front of me, but I don’t cook it myself
Bacon is wonderful! I love Zingerman’s bacon, smoked and peppered from Arkansas. I love Canadian bacon, prosciutto, pancetta (essential for cooking Italian dishes!), and Serrano ham. Maybe some people think bacon has jumped the shark, but for me, it is still a food of the gods.
Nothing tastes like bacon, but bacon. This is the battle cry of true bacon lovers around the world. We have a had a great love affair with everything edible that comes from our porcine friends.
So has bacon “jumped the shark”? No more than the term “jumped the shark” has.
Has the fad of trendy bacon manipulation faded a bit? Sure.
Has silly recipes and odd-ball uses of bacon in the name of some level of hipsterism faded a bit? Of course – the cool people never know when to look at a good thing and enjoy it for what it is.
I am sure that before long the tragically hip faux-foodies who think they invented bacon will find a new food – a simple delicious food like bacon – and try to embarrass it with edible candles and bad music videos.
The rest of us – the food-nerds – will have already been there and done and that – whatever it is – and we’ll be fine.
Bacon is – and always will be – best served simply.
Now that it is falling from fashion – it might get back to normal – just like Greg Brady did when he realized they wanted him to be Johnny Matador because he fit the suit.
it’s so good, and so bad. i keep it at a minimum in my diet, but my homemade fried rice relies on it. have you tried the bacon at walker bros. original pancake house on green bay road? thick, crisp, mmm-mmm good.