It’s Called a Magazine
Because of my past career in advertising, I have a deep relationship with food magazines. I ate lunch with Ruth Reichl, attended tastings hosted by Bon Appétit and went to wine awards presented by Food & Wine. But I’ve always preferred the smaller niche publications.
Soon after Gourmet or Bon Appetit published one of its annual reader polls naming Chablis their least favorite wine, Saveur did a multi-page feature on this far too often maligned region. And with that, they stole my heart.
The quick story with Chablis is that the name has been stolen in America and appropriated for cheap white wine sold in jugs. Chablis, however, is a serious wine region that produces a unique and delicious expression of chardonnay.
So the big and bloated food magazines are suffering and going out of business. Their advertisers are spending money elsewhere and publishers are practically giving away subscriptions for free. But the smaller operations like Cooks Illustrated that have a different revenue model seem to be thriving.
Now, there’s another small food magazine on the market. Have you seen it?
It’s called Lucky Peach and it’s a media darling.
In June it was featured on HuffPo.
In July it was written up in The New York Times.
Earlier this month there was a story on NPR’s All Things Considered.
Just yesterday it was featured on Time.com.
And I want it. But as of yet, haven’t gotten my grubby little mitts on a copy. The first issue all about ramen did so well it went into multiple printings, and that’s a positive sign for the future.
Like many good things in life, it’s not inexpensive. At $10 per issue it’s a lot more than you would spend on a typical magazine. But people are paying it. Because it’s not really a magazine, it’s a quarterly journal of food writing.
That means it’s smart, doesn’t take advertising, and only comes out four times a year.
This is what magazines used to be. A long long time ago GQ used to be Gentleman’s Quarterly. And it used to cost money to read it, and you could only get it four times a year. That made it special. It was something to pore over, it was something you waited for with anticipation, and it was something you read cover to cover.
These days most people spend less than an hour with the magazines they subscribe to, if they even read them at all.
On my last trip to San Francisco I stopped into City Lights Bookstore and was amazed to find that in this modern digital age people were still producing zines. I found a couple on food and carried them with me around town. I read them on the train, and as I waited for carts to come around at dim sum parlors.
To me, these were precious little booklets. And I enjoyed their independent spirit and the enthusiasm they had for the subject of food. From what I’ve seen, that’s exactly what Lucky Peach is about, but only on a significantly larger scale with some of the country’s top culinary professionals and writers along for the ride.
I cannot even begin to tell you how much this warms my heart. Now I’ve just got to get one.
FUSSYlittleBLOG 
It’s superb and absolutely worth a read. I wrote about my impressions of it here. http://twofoodiebrothers.com/2011/08/17/why-david-changs-lucky-peach-might-just-be-the-future-of-magazine-publishing-2/
I was flipping through a copy the other day in the Whole Foods line. It’s gorgeous!
It’s great – way more like a thin book than a magazine. It also changes genres many times (fiction, comic books, recipes (one hand written in Spanish!), interviews, non-fiction stories etc). Definitely worth a read.
I’ve got it in my grubby little hands right now. The first issue is devoted to ramen. I may be able to bring it to the Yelp event next week if my wife gives the OK. (She is the one who subscribes.)
Needs more ramen recipes! I would give you my copy but it is wet with drool.
ok, my wife says I can bring her copy but you have to promise to handle it with gloves. and a drool mask.
Thanks so much for sharing. Now I’ve got to get my grubby hands (because I’ve been gardening all day!) on one!
Bought this on Thursday at our friendly independent book store, The Book House. It is truly beautiful. It has gotten me riled up more than any food writing in recent memory. I’m loving it AND hating it, and I’m not even halfway through. Chang’s obsessive nature and excesses are maddening. I mean, who goes to Tokyo and eats so much ramen that they vomit from overeating almost daily? The conversation between Chang, Bourdain and Dufresne is intense. It’s just so far removed from any conversation about food that I’ve ever had.