In thecolumn, which received plenty of attention on the Post’s website and on social media platforms, Carman undresses cooks and chefs who default to adding bacon to every recipe and menu item. He refers to bacon as “the party crasher of ingredients, the one that shows up and trashes the place.”
The column chronicles the rise of bacon from a meager breakfast meat to culinary must that has found its way off the breakfast plate and into cinnamon rolls, cupcakes, ice cream, candy, pasta dishes, dips and much more. Carman acknowledges the indulgent attributes of bacon and admits his enjoyment of it but rues the fact that dating back as far as the 1980s, needless use of started appearing on the food scene, including the bacon-wrapped scallop. “If there’s one ingredient in the world that doesn’t need a slice of bacon around its waist to attract diners, it’s a sweet, succulent scallop,” writes Carman. He cites the use of bacon on hamburgers as the modern-day equivalent, as burgers have all the carnivorous attributes anyone could desire, and bacon merely becomes “a pork interloper asserting its authority like Cambridge Analytica over a nation’s electoral process.”
Carman concludes by claiming that today’s diners and consumers have a problem: “When it comes to bacon, we don’t know when to stop and say, ‘This dish is good enough already.’”
Reactions to the column were divisive, including anopen letterposted on the pork-belly centric website, Baconeering.com, which includes photographic comparisons of why bacon makes all food more desirable and calls out the author as a “bacon hater.”
But perhaps the best response was from a Post reader who posted this comment about Carman’s piece: “I didn’t like this column much, but then I wrapped it in bacon and it was OK.”
