Scott Gold brings home the bacon

Bacon Critic Scott Gold (Photo: Ashley Merlin Photography)

Congratulations to NolaVie contributor and Food Porn columnist Scott Gold, who beat out some 1,600 other salivating writers for the title of the nation’s Bacon Critic.

His competition included a guy with a giant bacon cross tattooed on his back, a guy who proposed to his “Bacon Queen” at a bacon fest in Pig Island, NY, a girl with a personalized BACON license plate (Illinois), and a would-be Viking adorned with a bacon helmet and sword. Clever guises all, but far too lean for the meaty title of Bacon Critic, according to the editors of new breakfast/brunch site extracrispy.com, which sponsored the contest.

So our own Scott stepped up to the plate, with a winning entry essay about bacon adventures experienced during his tenure in Brooklyn as a food writer and book author — he penned a tome called (of course) The Shameless Carnivore, A Manifesto for Meat Lovers during his time there.

After a decade in the Big Apple, Scott returned a few years ago to his native Big Easy, where he continues his culinary musings. Here at NolaVie, he has contributed his own unique brand of crisp prose as our Food Porn columnist, chronicling luscious dishes encountered citywide during his always-adventuresome sampling.

He also weighs in with monthly commentary on NolaVie’s Notes From New Orleans broadcast on WWNO public radio. One of our favorites is his recent explanation of The New Orleans Zone, which he describes as “a dimension of wild celebration of the human condition, a place where everyone is dawlin’ and no one is without a cold drink.” Like us, he does love the 504.

Stay tuned for Scott’s personal take on his upcoming three-month pork talk engagement. And we’ll be following him as he travels the world sampling and writing about bacon. His explorations will culminate in proclamation of the Best Bacon in America.

He has already completed his first couple of Extra Crispy assignments — a “please save my bacon” how-to interview with a couple of meaty writers, and a personal introduction in which he admits that, as “the lucky S.O.B.” who snagged the Bacon Critic job, he’s probably garnering plenty of envy. And with good reason: “Three months of eating and writing about bacon—and being paid for it? It doesn’t get much better than that.”

We agree.

Getting to the source of things. (Photo: Ashley Merlin Photography)