Extra Crispy, a Time Inc. website devoted to breakfast and brunch culture, has named Jewish food writer Scott Gold as its inaugural “Bacon Critic.”
The 39-year-old New Orleans native will spend three months hitting the road in search of the country’s best bacon, which he will announce in November. In his introductory post on Extra Crispy (www.tinyurl.com/extracrispy-gold), Gold reminisces cheekily about a childhood filled with po’boys, muffalettas “and oysters lovingly deep fried and wrapped in bacon.”
The hiring of Gold was announced on Aug. 1, following a public search that began in June. Some 1,500 eager bacon lovers applied for the job, the website reported.
Gold is a widely published journalist and author of “The Shameless Carnivore: A Manifesto for Meat Lovers.”
Though Gold declined to speak to JTA about his new position, he’s probably aware of the irony of a Jew being hired to write about bacon, which, of course, is unequivocally treif, or forbidden under kosher law. In 2013, he wrote an article for a New Orleans website describing how the local cuisine helped turn him into a kosher heretic — or in his words, a “bacon-cheeseburger-eating-Jew.”
“Consider the laws of kashrut: for the religious and hungry Jew, pigs are of course out, as are shrimp, oysters, crabs, crawfish, catfish (dirty bottom dwellers!), frogs, alligators, turtles … basically all the fantastic fauna indigenous to South Louisiana,” Gold wrote.
He continued, explaining that he “made some concessions with [his] heritage” but still often thinks about kosher law and his “non-obedience policy toward it.” Gold even wrote about one of his favorite Jewish meals: a pastrami sandwich from Katz’s Deli in New York City, with pickles and a can of Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray soda. Gold lived in Brooklyn, New York, for a decade before returning to New Orleans a few years ago.
It may be a dream job for many, but Gold’s task to find the best bacon in the country may be a difficult one — after all, as he told the New York Times, bacon is “rarely terrible.” — jta