Bacon Has Jumped the Shark

Yeah, yeah, we get it: You love bacon.Photo courtesy Bacon Salt

The nation’s infatuation with bacon gets stronger every year, but now it may have gone too far. We were members of the Bacon of the Month club from way back. We too fell in love with the bacon-flavored chocolate promoted at the Fancy Food Show recently. We even hosted occasional bacon tastings, and just for good measure included everyone’s favorite breakfast meat in our recent Grub Street grilling video. But to say “everything should taste like bacon,” like the zealous producers of Bacon Salt do, is perhaps taking the obsession too far.

The product’s entertaining Website tells the story of Justin and Dave, two “bacontrepeneurs,” who earlier this year had a eureka moment in which they conceived of the seasoning. “And from that point forward, a partnership was struck to turn this bacon-flavored dream into a reality.” They recommend putting it on steak, soup, mashed potatoes, corn, and French fries: everything, that is, but bacon. Why? Because bacon doesn’t need bacon seasoning. It doesn’t need chocolate. It doesn’t need to be wrapped around scallops. It doesn’t need to be made from boutique pigs, although the city’s best version, the house-smoked product at RUB, is. At the end of the day, as at the beginning, all we want from bacon is more of it. We can live without the accessories entirely.