Welcome to Bon Appétit's first-ever Culture Issue! All month long we'll be bringing you stories from the intersection of food and music and entertainment and politics and more. (Psst, subscribe here!)
Here at BA, we like to think we're as indie-minded as everyone else in the food world. But when you work in the tallest skyscraper in America, it's hard to argue that you're keeping it real. Fortunately, small journals are unearthing the ways craftier people are getting down with food. Here's how we catch up without leaving our cubicles.
A take on stylish women chefs, along with the lady stars who love them. The magazine is hosting its annual Jubilee this April.
The mag caters to people into avant-garde fashion and food with simple recipes and shoots of gorgeous shoes and/or fresh fruit. Good parties, too, at places like BA fave El Rey.
Talented Swedes Lotta and Per-Anders Jörgensen highlight pros like Magnus Nilsson and Massimo Bottura. Meanwhile, Fool's fantastic Spotify account goes into the ears of chefs.
Seasonal recipes in each Gather issue are built around artistic themes like "magic," "cocoon," or the latest, "origin." A useful app compiles all the recipes (and saves that nice paper stock from grease splatters).
Home cooks and seasonal ingredient disciples, gather round: Short Stacks are the books/magazines you need to collect and keep on an easily accessible shelf in your kitchen. The one ingredient per issue format lends itself to fantastic riffs from some of the best chefs, cooks, and recipe developers in the game, including our former senior food editor Alison Roman, who wrote the Lemons edition in 2015.
David Chang's kinda drunken, always amusing Momofuku world—albeit a version with zany ramen illustrations and issues dedicated to plants and breakfast.
The magazine to read on your next visit to a coffee shop. A city-by-city focus (New York, Tokyo, and Havana so far), high-low coverage, and vibrant, immersive photography from Adam Goldberg (aka A Life Worth Eating) and designer Daniela Velasco result in the astute coffee magazine you never knew you needed. [Full disclosure: associate web editor Elyssa Goldberg is the executive editor (and a cofounder) of Drift.]
Chinese food lovers are in luck. Cleaver Quarterly devotes each and every issue to Chinese cuisine, and features heartfelt stories about the diaspora alongside bonkers stories, like the one where they made a male editor follow a 30-day postpartum food and rest regimen for new mothers.
This London mag skews more art book than scrappy 'zine. Vintage photos of Liberace cooking (!) complement smart long-form writing, while The Gourmand's "on screen" site publishes interactive galleries.
If you've coveted apartments with billowy curtains, blonde woods, and all white decor, you probably already know about Kinfolk. The Portland-based magazine dedicated to "slow-living"—aka the opposite of grab-and-go culture, a lifestyle where people actually talk to each other—has a sizable cult following thanks to its stylish and coherent imagery across art, food, and design.
Hot Rum Cow dedicates entire issues to booze: sherry, cocktails, beer, you name it. If you can imbibe it for a buzz, you can read about it in Hot Rum Cow, which balances its funky party side with its intellectual office side in the best way possible.