Food & Wine Magazine

I got "an offer I can't refuse" in the mail the other day for an extremely discounted subscription to Food & Wine. Is this magazine worth while? I already get a several culinary mags and I only have a limited amount of time I can devote to reading, so I'd appreciate some critiques.

For a high-gloss Amex publication, the content:ad ratio is surprisingly favorable, and the photography is lovely. They have access to good chefs and don't pull many punches with the writing. This was a favorite article (excerpted, but the recipes are all there) from right about the time I got back from Spain:

http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/fas ... rran-adria

I don't subscribe because so much of their content is archived online, but I do find myself stealing the occasional older issue from relatives, or copying agriturismo / b&b reviews and recipes from copies I find in waiting rooms. YMMV.

Steve, I've been getting Food & Wine for years and enjoy the magazine. It's more serious than Bon Appetite and not as New Yorkish and glitzy as Gourmet. I've gotten many excellent recipes. Just ask Gwiv-he steals them all from my recipe program I also subscribe to Saveur. I like them both.

RevrendAndy wrote:It's more serious than Bon Appetite and not as New Yorkish and glitzy as Gourmet. I've gotten many excellent recipes.

I think this assessment is about right. I find Bon Appetit to be a little gimmicky and amateurish and although I find you need to read Gourmet with a New Yawk accent, I do enjoy its the occasional editions with an international focus - I enjoyed a recent Paris edition but not as much as London-focused one that was issued a few years ago. So go for it, and please forward any unread editions my way if you don't like it.

I find the issues a bit hit & miss & stopped subscribing. The other thing that really annoyed me (this particularly stands out on their website recipes) is that their standard recipe batch size is for 8 & far, far too many of their recipes aren't easily reduceable in size. I'm cooking just for myself usually & don't mind cooking a batch of something for four if it stores easily, but 8 is just ludicrous for me & I found myself cooking from the mag less & less because there wasn't enough I considered worth the effort. I'd rather invest in some cookery books I'll actually use.

I bought a few issues from the newsstand, then received a subscription for Christmas. I like the way they do the index in the front, one of food, one of wine. The articles are usually pretty interesting. I find my self flipping through it even after I have read it, which is unusual for me to do with a magazine. There is always something I want to try in it. Every recipe I've made has worked and been tasty. The issue I received yesterday might have one of the top 20 sentences you don't want to read in a food magazine, and the rest of the article was kind of annoying, so I can see the inconsistency issue raised upthread, but overall, I like it.

The sentence? "Not so long ago, attending wine auctions inevitably left me feeling like a eunuch at an orgy."

WTF?!? Seriously.

Although I love and recommend Saveur I almost felt like calling and cancelling my subscription after seeing Hawaiian ribs touted as world's best on the cover. Pleaaaaaaaasssssssssssseeeee! Say they are wonderful, delicious, but world's best? The recipe looks a bit sweet for my taste and they aren't smoked. They obviously haven't tasted anything from GWiv.

RevrendAndy wrote:Although I love and recommend Saveur I almost felt like calling and cancelling my subscription after seeing Hawaiian ribs touted as world's best on the cover. Pleaaaaaaaasssssssssssseeeee!

No kidding! It took me almost two weeks to actually look inside of this issue because I was so "annoyed" at the cover.

stevez wrote:

RevrendAndy wrote:Although I love and recommend Saveur I almost felt like calling and cancelling my subscription after seeing Hawaiian ribs touted as world's best on the cover. Pleaaaaaaaasssssssssssseeeee!

No kidding! It took me almost two weeks to actually look inside of this issue because I was so "annoyed" at the cover.

not to mention that cover, in actuality, consisted of a smidgen of content within an article covering Hawaiian foods buried at the back of the issue

here's another beef...not with Saveur(the only food rag I subscribe to...the rest of the plethora available...I buy at the newstand every so often...rarely Bon Appetit or Food and Wine), but with James Oseland, editor-in-chief.

I love his writing in Cradle of Flavor and he generally gets the balance right with Saveur, however I caught him judging a recent American Iron Chef competition and blah...his TV personality came across so snide, stereotypically New York-ish, cartoonish...now I can't get his nasally whine out of my head. Double Blecch.

Just subscribed (an offer I couldn't refuse - the only culinary magazine in Sparky's school fundraiser) and am underwhelmed with my first issue: seems to be a kind of Better Homes & Gardens for the Vogue reader. I waded through pages of sexy tableware to get to the recipe articles: "Easy Party Snacks for 20" and the waggishly-titled "Carnivore's Dilemma," a holiday article focusing on meat, which starts out talking about snout-to-tail, and ends with recipes for a ham, leg of lamb, rib roast, and a pork chop. At least there is an article on french cookies and another on caramel that interest me.

I haven't read it in-depth yet, but so far, visually and culinarily, this issue is a disappointment; I can't find a recipe index to confirm that, either - but there is a "directory" where you can source every napkin shown in the entire issue.

Maybe it will read better than it looks and works.

OK, one mystery solved...the recipe index is in the front, before the table of contents (where there are usually a bunch of ads that I typically skip over, thus why I missed it) Unfortunately, the recipes aren't any more inspiring - but the next page is an index of wines suggested for each recipe.