I love the Foo Fighters. I love bacon. I love Top Chef. But when my favorite rock stars start demanding bacon on their rider (per last week’s Top Chef) and a contestant wears a snarky “Bacon is a Vegetable” t-shirt in the same episode, the shark-jumping alert starts sounding. Loudly.
After a swell ride for two years, bacon has become the new fried Twinkie. Meaning bacon is no longer an edgy political statement of anti-establishment hipness or ironic post-cholesterol acceptance. It’s just bacon.
Putting it pies (yes, I’m guilty) or ice cream, crumbling it into chocolate, hosting tasting parties and smoking your own are no longer badges of chef ingenuity. Your secret love for the crispy delicious snap of a well-fried rasher will no longer be cause for gasps of awe. BiteClub predicts a downturn in the burgeoning bacon-schwag economy and you may be able to get a sweet deal on the Wake ‘N Bacon alarm clock after the holidays. Your bacon briefcase? So 2007.
Its rise to greatness was little surprise. After being ghettoized on buffet steam tables and greasy diners for decades, it was time for an anti-establishment food that actually tasted good.
Like tattoos, odd body-piercings and hot-pink hair, our embrace of bacon flew a big fat bird in the face of The Man. Screw organic vegetables, foams and haute cuisine! To hell with nutrition and cholesterol counts. Power to the pork! Because really, what could be more populist than a food best known for its rural following and horrifying fat content?
But like all good trends, its rise to mass-market appeal ruined the specialness, the insider cache, the wink-wink, nudge-nudge factor. When there’s a trucker hat involved, I’m jumping ship. Or, even more horrifyingly, a bacon bra.
So back into the porky closet bacon shall go. Delicious it will remain forever in our hearts and tables as we await its Robert Downey Junior comeback story while secretly nibbling the remnants of our Bacon of the Month Club.
*Per my grandmother’s request, jumping the shark refers to something that’s well past its prime.
Uh, or not, according to Jim Gaffigan…