Here's something you might be interested in.
David Chang, hot New York chef (founder of the insanely popular Momofuku chain that features Asian street foods in informal (even uncomfortable) settings, including a noodle house and an Asian tapas restaurant, absolutely refuses to do a TV show: “The whole thought of it made me cringe.”
Instead, he has invested in the supposedly dying medium of a print foodie magazine (with the grave of the seemingly-immortal Gourmet Magazine still fresh.) He and his collaborator, writer Peter Meehan, working under the aegis of McSweeney Publishing Company in San Francisco, thought about doing some sort of I-Pod ap of videos, recipes, blogs, etc., but after considering it, they decided, of all things. to do a magazine. A big, expensive, beautiful, totally eccentric quarterly, printed on heavy matte paper with original graphics, each issue devoted to a single foodstuff. It’s called Lucky Peach (the translation of momofuku). It’s the opposite of a typical glossy food magazine: No little snippets of cooking techniques or equipment promos, no inauthentic “adapted for Americans” recipes, no bloggy little infographics – and no ads.
The first issue is devoted to ramen (discussions, regional variations, recipes, a taste-test of noodles by Ruth Reichl, ex-editor of Gourmet), with a few side-street diversions, such as a verbal squabble between Anthony Bourdain, molecular gastronomy star Wylie Dufresne, and Chang himself, on the subject of culinary mediocrity.
Apparently it’s a dynamite read -- even as a beach read. (Unlike some of those terribly, terribly serious foodie mags, it’s reportedly fun.) The first printing of 40,000 sold out, ditto a second of 12,000. The price is $10.00 per copy at your local newstand (ha! local newstands in SD?) On the net for the hard-copy first issue: storemcsweeneysnet.index, or Amazon/Lucky Peach Magazine.
David Chang, hot New York chef (founder of the insanely popular Momofuku chain that features Asian street foods in informal (even uncomfortable) settings, including a noodle house and an Asian tapas restaurant, absolutely refuses to do a TV show: “The whole thought of it made me cringe.”
Instead, he has invested in the supposedly dying medium of a print foodie magazine (with the grave of the seemingly-immortal Gourmet Magazine still fresh.) He and his collaborator, writer Peter Meehan, working under the aegis of McSweeney Publishing Company in San Francisco, thought about doing some sort of I-Pod ap of videos, recipes, blogs, etc., but after considering it, they decided, of all things. to do a magazine. A big, expensive, beautiful, totally eccentric quarterly, printed on heavy matte paper with original graphics, each issue devoted to a single foodstuff. It’s called Lucky Peach (the translation of momofuku). It’s the opposite of a typical glossy food magazine: No little snippets of cooking techniques or equipment promos, no inauthentic “adapted for Americans” recipes, no bloggy little infographics – and no ads.
The first issue is devoted to ramen (discussions, regional variations, recipes, a taste-test of noodles by Ruth Reichl, ex-editor of Gourmet), with a few side-street diversions, such as a verbal squabble between Anthony Bourdain, molecular gastronomy star Wylie Dufresne, and Chang himself, on the subject of culinary mediocrity.
Apparently it’s a dynamite read -- even as a beach read. (Unlike some of those terribly, terribly serious foodie mags, it’s reportedly fun.) The first printing of 40,000 sold out, ditto a second of 12,000. The price is $10.00 per copy at your local newstand (ha! local newstands in SD?) On the net for the hard-copy first issue: storemcsweeneysnet.index, or Amazon/Lucky Peach Magazine.