Mmmmm, bacon

It seems that bacon is the new, um, bacon. It's the trendy food item that as Ted Allen says, "makes everything taste better."

I whole-heartedly agree. And so, apparently, does Denny's.

Denny's continues its marketing renaissance with this month's promotion, "Baconalia, the sacred festival of bacon." It's a smart campaign for a lot of reasons.

It celebrates and elevates Denny's diner heritage. It's built around a food that just about everyone loves (yes, I know certain religious sects are on the outside looking in on this one). They've created some nice products around their featured ingredient, including one that's sure to turn some heads, the maple bacon sundae. They've come up with a name that warms this old Latin major's heart, one that's much more interesting and memorable than bacon-fest, baconmania or bacon-palooza.

And they produced a nice spot to promote the event.


My only question is, how good is that bacon?

I'm sure it's as good as anything else that comes off the back of the Sysco truck, but I doubt it's the kind of bacon that made Ari Weinzweig wax rhapsodic in his paean to porcine perfection. And that's the one thing they could have done to make this promotion better, co-brand with a specialty bacon brand.

So in honor of Baconalia, I think I'll get out the skillet and fry up some bacon from Neuske's or Willow Creek.

I'm not even going to tell you what I'm planning to do with the bacon grease after it cools.