Time Anoints First-Ever ‘Bacon Critic’ — and He’s Jewish

Pork pusher: Scott Gold is a food writer from New Orleans. Image by Facebook
JTA — Among those who don’t keep kosher, few food items ignite passion the way bacon does. So when the website Extra Crispy announced in June that it was searching for a Bacon Critic — yes, with capital letters — some 1,500 eager pork lovers applied for their dream job.
Given the fact that bacon is unequivocally treyf, or forbidden under kosher law, there’s a smoky, meaty whiff of irony that on Monday, Extra Crispy — a Time Inc. site devoted to breakfast and brunch culture — named Jewish food writer Scott Gold as its inaugural bacon specialist.
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. Based on his introductory post on Extra Crispy — in which he reminisces cheekily about a childhood filled with po’boys, muffalettas “and oysters lovingly deep fried and wrapped in bacon” — his weekly dispatches from the bacon field will likely be worth reading.
Gold is a widely published journalist and author of “The Shameless Carnivore: A Manifesto for Meat Lovers.” And he’s probably aware of the irony of a Jew being hired to write about this most beloved of breakfast meats. (He declined to speak with JTA.) In 2013, he wrote an article for NolaVie (a New Orleans culture site where he contributes a regular column named Food Porn) describing how the Crescent City’s cuisine helped turn him into a kosher heretic — or in his words, “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.
As he explained, he “made some concessions with [his] heritage” but still often thinks about kosher law and his “non-obedience policy toward it.” Gold even dished on one of his favorite Jewish meals: a pastrami sandwich from Katz’s Deli in New York City, complete with mustard, pickles and a can of Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray soda. (Like any proper up-and-coming writer, Gold spent a requisite decade living in Brooklyn 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.”
It’s possible that Gold could achieve another first: Find a tasty, kosher bacon substitute that’s as good as the real deal. But whatever happens, you have to hand it to a writer who’s bringing home the bacon by, well, bringing home the bacon.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 2
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 3
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture This Jewish New Yorker survived the Holocaust and the Hungarian Revolution, and is still helping others today
-
Fast Forward Trump says he and Netanyahu are ‘on the same side of every issue’ following talks on Iran, tariffs
-
Fast Forward California school board members accused of antisemitism during contentious meeting
-
Fast Forward Over 100 Chicago-area rabbis and cantors condemn Trump’s campus crackdown
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.