Contemporary Food Magazines: A Five Course Menu - Friends of Friends / Freunde von Freunden (FvF)

Contemporary Food Magazines: A Five Course Menu

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Feeling hungry? Food has been a recurring theme in recent FvF content. Whether it be sharing food together in the office and bringing in home baked goods, our guest suggestions on the best local places to grab a drink and bite to eat, or the FvF Cooks recipes. FvF guests such as chef Jean-Marc Houmard, Soli Zardosht and Norbert Niederkofler, Wellness Coach Ashley Neese, and Lili Cuzor and Elijah Pointer with their sophisticated cocktail concoction have also helped to maintain connections in our content with culinary delights. After all we all love good food.

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On our recent visit to our favorite store for contemporary magazines and books do you read me?! the FvF team selected five of the best contemporary food magazines to turn the pages of for a very special FvF food magazine special. Food magazines have become increasingly specialized and diverse in recent years providing readers with extensive information on everything from sourcing ingredients and particular regional cooking processes, to introducing industry movers and shakers. We explore the role these magazines are playing in the field of independent publishing by investigating them in detail.

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The Gourmand
The inception of The Gourmand: A food and culture journal originally derived from a dinner conversation with friends. So far these initial ideas have resulted in two issues that aim to explore the influx of new restaurants, hot ingredients and changing trends within the food and wine industry, ultimately “celebrating food as a catalyst for creativity.” Jarring with its contemporaries, The Gourmand has a distinct 70s quirky aesthetic. Food imagery is displayed across its pages almost seductively. With an interesting overlap into the art world and its relation to food as a point of different, issue 2 interviews performance artist Jennifer Rubell.

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Lucky Peach
Coming out of San Francisco Lucky Peach is a quarterly journal with an individual focus for each issue. And they do their research. With David Chang from the Momofuku Restaurant Group and Anthony Bourdain of “No Reservations” television fame on board hopes are set high. Intelligently and humorously, Lucky Peach delivers with punchy graphics, inventive layouts and well researched pieces. Issue 8 is a great example of what they do best. As the front and back covers may disclose the theme of ‘Gender’ is tackled in the realm of gastronomy. With the magazine divided in two: ‘For Women’ and ‘For Men’ it is complete with testicle and penis recipes and an exploration into reproduction and the teat.

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Chick Pea Magazine
Chick Pea is a vegan publication produced in Canada. In the pursuit of promoting whole-foods and plant based lifestyles, Chick Pea presents an authentic DIY approach to its content. Featuring inspiring stories, beautiful imagery, vegan restaurants, recipes and fair-trade ingredients, Chick Pea is a one stop shop for natural food lovers.

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MOOD Music & Food Magazine
MOOD Music & Food Magazine is an interesting take on the traditional food magazine, melding the two topics of music and food together to create a very particular focus. This perhaps unusual pairing is conveyed convincingly in this quarterly magazine produced in Belgium with the help of an international contributor base. Throughout the advertisement free matt pages, the third issue comprises suggested soundtracks to specific dishes, introductions to personalities who share similar dual interests, and features recipes from key music cities – such as the “Detroit Square Pizza Bruschetta.”

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GATHER Journal
In a small hand held format GATHER Journal is less about full-length articles and more about recipes with informative anecdotes and facts; akin to a personal notebook. The immaculate, almost cinematic quality of the accompanying photographs create a spectacle for each and every dish. Recipes are neatly combined around a central topic for each issue, telling an accumulative story where ideas ‘gather’.

With this Journal post we provide an outlook for an ongoing collaboration with Berlin based magazine store do you read me?!. Stay tunes

Photography: Philipp Langenheim
Text: Rachael Watts

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