Ask for Canadian bacon in Canada and you will get a polite correction. What Americans call Canadian bacon is a fully cooked, lightly smoked pork loin, sliced into thin rounds. Canadians mostly do not eat it, and when they do they call it back bacon. What they actually eat, and what Toronto in particular is proud of, is peameal bacon.
We serve peameal. Here is what it is, and why it belongs on a Buffalo breakfast plate.
Same cut, different path
| Canadian bacon | Peameal bacon | |
|---|---|---|
| Cut | Boneless pork loin | Boneless pork loin, trimmed lean |
| Cure | Brined, then smoked and cooked | Wet-cured (brined), never smoked |
| Coating | None | Rolled in cornmeal |
| Sold as | Ready to eat, thin slices | Raw, thick slices, you cook it |
| Flavor | Mild, smoky, ham-like | Juicy, salty-sweet, crisp cornmeal edge |
The cornmeal is where the name comes from, sort of. In the 1800s, cured pork loins were rolled in ground dried yellow peas to help preserve them and keep them from sticking together on the shelf. Peas gave way to cornmeal sometime around the First World War, but the name stuck. Nobody has ever successfully renamed a food that people already liked.
Why it matters on a plate
Because Canadian bacon is already cooked, it mostly gets warmed through. It is fine. It is a ham slice with a better publicist.
Peameal is raw when it hits the griddle, so it actually cooks. The loin stays juicy inside while the cornmeal toasts and the cured edges caramelize. The result is closer to a small, tender pork chop than to a slice of deli meat, which is exactly what you want holding up a poached egg. That is the reason it is the bacon on our Eggs Benedict, and why people who order it once tend to order it again.
Ours is cured with maple sugar, which pushes the salty-sweet thing a little further. Sear it hard and you get a crust that sounds like something when you cut it.
How to order it here
- On the Benedict, which is the classic use and the one we would point a first-timer to.
- On a fried egg sandwich on a toasted roll, which is the best version of that sandwich we know how to make.
- As a side next to a stack of pancakes, if you are the type who wants sweet and salty on the same fork.
- "Breakfast style" on a burger: a fried egg, peameal, and cheddar on the Double Smash. It is on the burger page under the add-ons, and it is a lot.
Canadian bacon gets warmed. Peameal gets cooked. That's the difference.
A note on geography
Buffalo sits about as close to Toronto as it does to Rochester, and the food shows it. Loganberry, peameal, the reflexive "sorry" when someone bumps your stool. Some of that crossed the border on purpose. Some of it just drifted. Either way, if you have a Canadian visitor at the table, put peameal in front of them at our counter and watch them relax a little.