Granted, the whole everything bacon craze has gone too far and far too mainstream to really be taken seriously anymore but that doesn’t mean that bacon didn’t warrant all the attention in the first place. Bacon is an innocent victim here, it’s not bacon’s fault it’s so delicious, it’s the fault of the fad-obsessed, must-create-something-unique-to-be-accepted-by-the-collective mindset of us people that’s pushed bacon over the edge into an omnipresent, catch-phrasey, “oddball” ingredient and marketing tool. Don’t blame the bacon.

I wasn’t planning on having a cocktail at brunch at 11:00am this morning, but there it was on Serpentine’s list, the Pot Belly, a breakfast-y sounding combo of bacon-infused Bulleit Bourbon, maple syrup, Bittermans’ Elemakule Tiki Bitters (cinnamon & allspice), and an orange twist. Seeing as I was already getting a braised bbq pork sandwich, and a side of Neuske’s bacon…I figured, why the hell not? Aside from the somewhat suspect, now-you’ve-gone-too-far-sir idea of infusing alcohol with meat, this was actually a pretty damn good cocktail, plenty of restraint on the bacon, just the right amount of sweet maple…Sunday breakfast over ice, really. Oddly enough, there was just enough smokiness from the bacon to occasionally make me think there was Scotch in there…that is, until the faint porkyness kicked in. So yeah, a surprisingly great cocktail that paired well with Serpentine’s always awesome brunch.