Decline of the The Major Food Magazines

I admit it, I bought a copy of the much-sought-after Saveur Pasta issue off the news stand awhile back...and it's not all that great shakes, but compared to what's become of the top commercial American Food Magazines that once held a certain aura of erudition, it's heads above...

Saveur is quickly becoming the only one of the four(Bon Appetit, Food and Wine, and Gourmet included) that is worth the cost of the glossy paper it's printed on...the rest have fallen swiftly down the rabbit hole of advertising dollars and "lifestyle" trends.

Any thoughts?

No one can accuse Cooks Illustrated as not being "worth the cost of the glossy paper it's printed on ...."

I used to love Food and Wine, 15 years ago, but it gradually came to seem to me like a People magazine about Foodie/Winie celebrities. If there's a "jump the shark" phenomenon for magazines, it's when it becomes more about the celebrities than the original topic. (Runner's World, for example, but that's another thread, for another forum).

The only things I save these days are Cooks Illustrated and Fine Cooking. But I do still love getting Gourmet and Bon Appetit in the mail, and go through them the same day they arrive. I tear out everything that interests me and pile them up. Eventually all the recipes and tips in the pile will go into some commonplace books I plan on putting together if/whenever I have some paid vacation days.

I did buy (unusual for me) the Saveur pasta issue and tear out the bolognese pages, but there wasn't enough else there to persuade me (yet) to subscribe.

I hadn't seen Bon Appetit in years until I found a family member (who doesn't cook or eat very much) had it on her coffee table. (Strangely, she has a subscription). I flipped through the most recent couple issues and it seemed to me to be a magazine version of the Food Network--flashy, bland, and designed for the lowest common denominator.

The only food magazines I get in print anymore are Saveur and Art of Eating (really more of a journal). Cooks Illustrated has become an online-only subscription for me.

Best,
Michael

I read food magazines primarily to find interesting new things to cook, or ideas about food preparation, so from this context most of the food magazines are not particularly helpful.

I love Cook's Illustrated. They can get a little pedantic, but its the one magazine truley dedicated to actual cooking and experimenting with new techniques. I also occasionally find something good in Food and Wine, though not as often as I used to. Gourmet and Saveur have very nice photography, but I rarely have success with the actual recipies. In my experience they have needed a lot of tweaking to actually give results similar to the photographs, or despite all the pretty pictures, when you read through the recipies there is really not that much new or interesting.

As far as the writing about food is concerned, I find that the articles in the NY Times (print edition, on-line Minimalist, Sunday Magazine articles) are better than just about anything I see in an of the major food magazines.

We get Cook's Illustrated, which I enjoy but wish were monthly instead of bimonthly. We also got a free (or nearly so) subscription to Gourmet. Although I occasionally enjoy it, it strikes me as a more ad-hyped, substance-deprived magazine than in the good old days, back when, say, Laurie Colwin (among many others) was still alive and writing for it. That's not to say that it isn't occasionally worth it, but on balance I don't think we'll renew when its time comes.

Related query: though it's neither American nor a typical food magazine, is anyone here a subscriber to or reasonably familiar with Petits Propos Culinaires? Opinions.

In addition to Cooks Irritated, Fine Cooking has maintained pretty high standards, without succumbing to the "lifestyle" trend.

nr706 wrote:No one can accuse Cooks Illustrated as not being "worth the cost of the glossy paper it's printed on ...."

Gypsy Boy: If you're interested in PPC then you might want to checkout The Wilder Shores of Gastronomy, a PPC anthology

nr706: I specifically didn't include CI...not glossy, not advertiser-driven, different focus than the magazines I cite.

as for CI(attention thread derailment): too often it's "how to boil water 101" instead of information that I find useful...

it's not a bad magazine, and it has it's place certainly...just not necessarily one in my stacks

Katie: that's the way I handle the monthly food magazine pile when it gets unwieldy, tear out the recipes/articles that caught my fancy then box them in a container dedicated for easy access in the kitchen...the magazine remainders go for recycling.

I read 'em all usually -- although Saveur I tend to avoid unless the topics interest me. Food and Wine rarely has recipes in it that I want to cook. My mother has boycotted it because of that. She's actually written them and said she's banned it from the house because there isn't anything worthwhile in it and my mother is a mellow person. Bon Appetit almost always has recipes I'm interested in and Gourmet, ever since Ruth Reichl took over, has been my favorite reading mag out there. Pretty pictures too! <grin>

Cooks Illustrated I tend to just use for their website but what I've enjoyed getting occasionally is their "Cooks Country" magazine -- that's a bit more folksy but the recipes have a great appeal to me. It doesn't seem quite as "how to boil water" oriented, as a previous poster noted.

Slightly off-topic: Does anyone else out there read Christopher Kimball's editorial introductions in CI and, at the end of them, think, huh??!

aschie30 wrote:Slightly off-topic: Does anyone else out there read Christopher Kimball's editorial introductions in CI and, at the end of them, think, huh??!

"Huh!" Precisely.

aschie30 wrote:Slightly off-topic: Does anyone else out there read Christopher Kimball's editorial introductions in CI and, at the end of them, think, huh??!

Can you say "self-indulgent?"

Indeed. I look forward to my Cooks Illustrated issues IN SPITE of his ramblings. They remind me of what Garrison Keillor would write if he were hungry.

When I first took up home cooking seriously 20 years ago, I subscribed to Bon Appetit. Even then, its content was a far cry from what one would find in Gourmet. Kind of like an unspohisticated country cousin coming for a visit once a month.

I take it from reading this thread that nothing has changed over 20 years.

wak wrote:I love Cook's Illustrated. They can get a little pedantic

Yes, as in defining "fond" every time they mention it.

It's true that I don't always read the article that goes with a recipe in Cook's Illustrated. But I wish that the articles and recipes in Gourmet had more to do with each other. As it is, I think that Gourmet doesn't test its recipes thoroughly, and I don't think that their articles give you a good description of what makes a certain preparation special. Calling something a "classic" version or a "new twist on" something is not helpful.

I do pick up Gourmet every now and then, but I am buying it less and less frequently. Last copy I bought and kept: 2006 Christmas cookie issue. This latest issue has celebrity chefs around the world and (versions of) their recipes (I don't actually believe they're giving out the complete recipes).

Oh, and I rarely read Kimball's "my hobby farm" columns, but I prefer them in principle to another "Luncheon with the Contessa"-style article in Saveur or Gourmet. I prefer overdone folksiness to unadulterated snobbery.

MariaTheresa wrote:I prefer overdone folksiness to unadulterated snobbery.

For me, Christopher Kimball's "overdone folksiness" = "unadulterated snobbery."

One interesting thing a propos of this theme is how useful are some of the older bound editions from Bon Apetite. I've got some "Best Recipes of 19XX" from the 80s and early 90s that I've found in used book stores, which contain a fairly high flux density of neat recipes.

Now, as many have noted above, there's not much interesting or useful in BA or its ilk.

Dumbed down. Anything that requires reading has been dumbed down. What the hey! Anything that requires *thinking* has been dumbed down.

Geo

And the latest print-industry casualty is Gourmet, which is reportedly closing soon.

Edited to fix link.

nr706 wrote:

aschie30 wrote:Slightly off-topic: Does anyone else out there read Christopher Kimball's editorial introductions in CI and, at the end of them, think, huh??!

Can you say "self-indulgent?"

my husband loves to read aloud the introductions in a hilariously mocking tone of voice. he hates christopher kimball.

At the conclusion of any given rambling talk, I'd really like to ask Mr. Kimball either (or both) of two questions:

1) "Do you think we care?"

2) "And your point is?"

While it's true that, if you want to editorialize, it's sufficient to buy a newspaper, I'm not so sure this follows in the case of a food mag.

Geo

I feel like you could make a mad lib for Christopher Kimball's CI "editor's page" or whatever they call it; those things just seem to write themselves.

Christopher Kimball's Random Message generator wrote:Well, it's [insert season of year] here again in Vermont, and [insert same season] always reminds me of [insert name of revered family member or quirky neighbor]'s special [insert name of revered family member's or quirky neighbor's special dish/crop]. See, growing up in rural Vermont, everyone had to [insert stereotypical good-old-days, community-minded activity like being on the volunteer fire force] or else it would not get done; it's just the way it was. I remember sitting on/in/by [porch/hay bale/old quarry with the rope swing for summer, warming shed at the old skating pond/hearth for winter] eating [insert special dish/crop] and thinking about how one day I could engage in the [insert stereotypical good-old-days, community-minded activity]. And to this day, when I smell [insert special dish/crop] baking in the oven/cooking on the stove, it makes me want to go out and [insert civic-minded activity within a certain realm, such as giving to NPR, rallying for single-payer health care at the capitol, collecting signatures for petition to ban non-local foods from school lunches] . . .

Matt wrote:I feel like you could make a mad lib for Christopher Kimball's CI "editor's page" or whatever they call it; those things just seem to write themselves.

Christopher Kimball's Random Message generator wrote:Well, it's [insert season of year] here again in Vermont, and [insert same season] always reminds me of [insert name of revered family member or quirky neighbor]'s special [insert name of revered family member's or quirky neighbor's special dish/crop]. See, growing up in rural Vermont, everyone had to [insert stereotypical good-old-days, community-minded activity like being on the volunteer fire force] or else it would not get done; it's just the way it was. I remember sitting on/in/by [porch/hay bale/old quarry with the rope swing for summer, warming shed at the old skating pond/hearth for winter] eating [insert special dish/crop] and thinking about how one day I could engage in the [insert stereotypical good-old-days, community-minded activity]. And to this day, when I smell [insert special dish/crop] baking in the oven/cooking on the stove, it makes me want to go out and [insert civic-minded activity within a certain realm, such as giving to NPR, rallying for single-payer health care at the capitol, collecting signatures for petition to ban non-local foods from school lunches] . . .

Hilarious.

aschie30 wrote:

Matt wrote:I feel like you could make a mad lib for Christopher Kimball's CI "editor's page" or whatever they call it; those things just seem to write themselves.

Christopher Kimball's Random Message generator wrote:Well, it's [insert season of year] here again in Vermont, and [insert same season] always reminds me of [insert name of revered family member or quirky neighbor]'s special [insert name of revered family member's or quirky neighbor's special dish/crop]. See, growing up in rural Vermont, everyone had to [insert stereotypical good-old-days, community-minded activity like being on the volunteer fire force] or else it would not get done; it's just the way it was. I remember sitting on/in/by [porch/hay bale/old quarry with the rope swing for summer, warming shed at the old skating pond/hearth for winter] eating [insert special dish/crop] and thinking about how one day I could engage in the [insert stereotypical good-old-days, community-minded activity]. And to this day, when I smell [insert special dish/crop] baking in the oven/cooking on the stove, it makes me want to go out and [insert civic-minded activity within a certain realm, such as giving to NPR, rallying for single-payer health care at the capitol, collecting signatures for petition to ban non-local foods from school lunches] . . .

Hilarious.

Aside from eating the food, it's the only part of the magazine my husband cares about. Of course he's the small town flyfishing lover & hunter of pheasant, ruffed grouse, & savior to woodcock (too cute to shoot).

We have many dear friends in the countryside (towns with populations less than 1k & no internet or cell coverage) who remind us of Kimball & his neighbors. They still can their own foods, garden, fish & hunt (with a real bow & arrow--not that compound bow stuff), & eat out only on weekends & special occasions.

I think it's just a different lifestyle than that of a lot of the folks on this board.