Magazine Review: The Gourmand

Since the Cookbook Store has closed, I've been looking at less likely places to pick up food magazines. I picked up this periodical at room 2046, near Summerhill subway station. The store has hints of food with their bowls, plates, napkins, cookbooks and food magazines. A design shop that is tight and focused. Like Cibo Matto, food isn't central. In a more pretentious place, this would be called curated due to its relation to art and design but it is more eccentric and deliberate; candle with scents like thyme and lemon and of course, they serve coffee and sweets.

The Gourmand is a magazine that tries to marry this same type of focused eclecticism. The look is somewhere between 70's naturist mags and museum guide book. It says on the spine that it is Issue 3 but inside the editor's not states that it is the fourth issue. Far from being an error, it reminds me of the joke of the person standing in the express line; wondering if the person ahead of them is a math major that can't read or an arts major that can't count. They may be channeling the comics industry where Issue #0 is the origin issue but then that isn't counted as part of the number system.

The strange thing is that in this internet age, you can be a polymath and find all the information you need. This means that a periodical has to bring more to the table than more of the same. Either specialized knowledge or a point of view that no one else has. The general interest mag is dead. Now you have to be a part of a community of interest or geography, or have a unique collection of goods that are put together in an interesting way. Design has become a reason to read.

Due to the eclectic nature, a few bits were impressive to me:

• photos of pasta
• Teenage Little Chef - a view into Britannia that I had only seen on Food Television with Heston Blumenthal.
• Sunday specials about a synaesthete, who experiences sounds as tastes. The interesting bit was that they tried doing it backwards by presenting a dish and asking what sound would give you this taste and photographing the representation of sounds. For me, it is like trying to deconstruct a restaurant dish with a pantry of items with mixed familiarity. The photos generated are oddly cohesive and disjointed.

The strongest two pieces together bring what this mag can be at its best. Driving Light about a roving food truck in Jerusalem and The Living Archive about sourdough as an art installation. Smak Polski a description of the Polish influx into Britain tries to define Eastern European and locate the impact through Lituanica, a Lithuanian wholesale company who imports much of this 'ethnic' food.

There are a number of articles that have been covered elsewhere and I would consider them close to their expiry date. This magasine is written for a British audience and maybe the coverage of these things are more North American but I'm not so sure. These topics include; an article on Milton Glaser, coverage of the ortolan, and Les Blank coverage. With a little more exposition and focus, the last piece could have been a great piece. Maybe part of the issue is with publishing in general where more of the effort of editing has been pushed back onto the writers. Not all writers are good editors or have a good eye on how to make a single article fit into a whole mag.

It is an expensive proposition to buy this publication due to the exchange rate. It provided jumping off points for my own explorations but it was the gentle nudging of wistfulness rather than the spark of ardor. It didn't drive curiosity like a well selected mag would. I will try another issue or two to see if I can understand the accolades and awards but it doesn't offer much for the hardcore connected foodie.

Magazine Review: Spacing Fall 2011

I have already gone through some of the local magazines in the last while and I have left spacing until last.  It has been the hardest one to review for a variety of reasons.  I always look at this magazine as a blog first and I read it like I would read a blog.  

I bounce around the issue and ignore the pieces that I am not interested in and spend a lot of time on the pieces that I like.  The best blogs are conversations.  The best pieces in spacing invites disagreements and discussions.  This is where the value in spacing lives.  It is the beginning for a larger engagement.

I'll try to explain a little better with some examples.  Last year I was talking about how the best ethnic food is no longer going to be found in traditional ethnic centres (i.e. the best Indian food will not be found on Gerrard street or Italian on College.)  I was not quite sure what that meant.  There is a thoughtful piece about the move of good ethnic eats to suburbia by Sarah Efron.  It attempts to explain the migration of communities from downtown to the suburbs and it does provide a likely story.

This year, a new market started in the Beaches and I wonder how they will survive.  A piece that examines the business of the markets written by Dylan Reid appears using the St Andrew's Market as its case study.  It provides some good background information on how it came to happen and whether it will succeed.  It provides a basis to open a discussion on the viability.  Coupled with the article around whether farmers' markets are just feel good by Shawn Micallef and you begin to get the start of a dialogue.

The rest of the food related articles are similar thought probes that provide the opportunity for action, discussion and mobilization.  It makes we want to get up and be a joiner.  Something I definitely am not.  But then...  I go to the website and try to find a way to become engaged.  It seems that this may just be another magazine with no ability for readers to become more involved.  It is obvious that the people behind spacing are empassioned and informed.  They are doers.  But there is no way for me to find my way into the picture.  I am having difficulty navigating by category and finding pieces that I know must exist on their site.  Hopefully this is a temporary technical problem.

The whole idea just promises so much.  With such smart writing and good ideas, it should be making a bigger impact on our city.  You need to take the mag along with the blog and all the other social media before you can become connected and it shouldn't be as filled with barriers as it is.  Still, pick it up.  It will get you thinking and if that is all it does, then that is enough.

Magazine Review: dandyhorse

So, I am in a local magazine shop looking for the new Lucky Peach, and I see dandyhorse still on the racks.  That reminds me that I have not reviewed the food issue that I picked up this summer.  I am going to rectify this oversight right this minute.

dandyhorse is a magazine about bicycle culture in Toronto subtitled, Toronto on two wheels.  I have always been a secret wannabe cyclist wanting to recapture the joy of cycling down the hill like a kid.  I bought a bike two summers ago and have only ridden it about a dozen times but so badly I want to get to the point where I am at least riding weekly.  Finally, I had an excuse to pick it the magazine after noticing the covers for some time. They have always been interesting, and colourful like candy and youth.  This issue was about food and I could fool myself that I was buying it for the Bob Blumer guest editor thing, even though I was secretly trying on the whole bike culture thing.

I have followed Bob Blumer since his Surreal Gourmet days.  I was a little afraid that this issue would be overly spandexed and all hyper granola, embracing nutrition and the engagement of scientific foodism.   Of course, coffee and calories do factor in but there was more than I expected.

Sandwiched amongst those articles was an  article about food delivery around the world and in Toronto.  Tiffins and beer are being delivered here and the pictures of the delivery vehicles were cool.  But more importantly, the tone wasn't one of pedantic pedallers or eco-nuttiness but rather a worldly tone of how other places in the world do things and, gosh, wouldn't it be nice if we could too.

Most articles were short with just a few points to pique interest.  Sometimes it felt as if someone had taken a Powerpoint presentation and turned it into a magazine.  In this way, it reminded me of older 'zines that were edited by one person who wrote about stuff they liked to varying degrees of success.  Recipes from Cava and Parts and Labour were served with a side of fashion spreads and pictures of people and their bikes.  Sometimes the logic was loose and more about interest.

The marriage of food and bikes seemed a little fanciful and forced like when my five year old takes his favourite stuffy to school and describes all the things that his stuffy did that day.  Much like I enjoy the whimsy of my child in these moments, I kind of enjoyed this zine in the same way.  It doesn't hold enough attention for me as a non-cyclist but when I finally get on my dandyhorse and pretend that I am looking through the ears of a pretend stallion, then maybe I will give this magazine another chance.  If you like serious fancy then maybe you'll like this.  If you are right now baking your own granola and figuring out your calorie requirements for tomorrow while determining your optimal sleep patterns then give this a pass.

Magazine Review: ACQTASTE

Over the summer and early fall, there have been a number of food themed special issues from Lapham's Quarterly, dandyhorse, Creative Nonfiction and spacing (No link available yet).  These are one offs that try to marry to varying degree of awkwardness, their niche with food in general.  Then there was a BIG launch of Lucky Peach, the McSweeney's entry into food starring David Chang followed by their first recipe book, Mission Street Food.

Food is hot right now.  Food issues are now becoming reasons for municipal debate in areas such as food regulations, food carts in Toronto and the whole Stop the MegaQuarry.  There has been a growing food literature but it all seems disjointed.  The above magazines fall into one of two types, niche magazines that are putting out a special issue that loosely cleaves to their interest (food as fuel, food as fodder for thought or a miscellany of food related facts) or very focused, hyperfocused on one topic of food (Ramen).  These have all been entertaining and eye opening to some degree.

Along comes ACQTASTE with the acqward title, (see what I did there) that is probably to be read acquired taste.  It is roughly the size of Kobo or Kindle with a distinct layout mix of photos and text.  The articles cover people cooking your food, what a chef's brunch looks like, Jen and Grant and other pieces including two thought pieces at the end.

This magazine is largely a product of Chuck Ortiz, if the published piece bylines are to be believed.  This magazine reminds me of another first issue that I read a long time ago.  It was another high concept and specific magazine that many thought could not make it.  Wired was the magazine that came along at the advent of the web and wrote about technology culture.  It was nebulous at first with a design aesthetic that eventually influenced web design and other magazines.  A good portion of the magazine was electronic and connected.  It was a San Jose Mercury for the world but told in small stories with big thoughts.

ACQTASTE could be the Wired for food.  I believe that acqtaste could be the advent of magazines for portable readers.  It is the first magazine that really gets the format and how stories need to be told for a smaller screen with limited attention.  Not the small twitter feeds but rather the blog sized pithiness with weight in few words that can be given.

Looking at their website is required for understanding acquired.  Yes, the writing can be a little clunky and quirky much like blog writing but there is one opinion piece at the end that makes me believe that there is a need for overarching stories about food.  'The Space Between' begs to be unpacked liked a McLuhan koan into its component parts.  It reminds me of a finished dish where you can taste the components but know that underneath the simplicity of sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph, there lives some serious technique of thought and writing.

The electronic bits are less expensive than the paper bound magazine and some thought should be given to creating a decent digital version of the magazine after the fact.  The extra content on the website follows the same design as the mag.  It fits. I am not sure how one makes this work as a business model but as a paying customer, it is immensely satisfying and I look forward to the next issue.  I will pay because I understand the worth.  Like a simple dish ordered from a good restaurant, you know good when you try it.   It is not simply an acquired taste.  (oops, see what I did again?)

Magazine Review: Alimentum - The Literature of Food

Alimentum is a semi annual literary magazine that focuses on food.  The issue that I picked up was Issue Twelve. The magazine was a mixture of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, interview, and art.  The theme of this issue was supposed to be on first foods but this was very loosely adhered to and provided distracting.  Some of my reading time of these mainly short pieces were spent waiting or looking for the connection to first foods.  On my trip back and forth to work, the pieces were generally short enough to finish during the commute.

Some pieces that I found interesting...
Stollen by Phillip Sterling is a series of small remembrances around the ingredients of stollen. This is a device that allows for little bits and nibbles of interesting tidbits and crumbs. Like the stollen, the little pieces are what makes the whole. An enjoyable read with coffee.

Interview with Amanda Hesser -- She's the writer of Cooking for Mr Latte and co-creator of Food52.  It provided some insight and was a lot of fun.

Having our cake but not eating it by Lois Rosen is a great carvesque story of the human condition. It has all the sorrow and goodness with a little something that isn't always found in these type of stories.  At its heart is a mother trying to cook - love and being rejected by daughter. However, the piece that is often missing is the reason for all of the brokenness.

There is a second story about a mother being a failure by loving her daughter too much and feeling a failure as her child gets fatter (Goldie's Gold by Faye Snider).

I was going to write off this magazine but after reflecting, it is a we'll see. There is some good writing in here but ten dollars can seem like a lot when you have so many choices of magazines on the market. But if you find yourself picking up food themed novels, then this is definitely a refreshing change from the celebrity chef food porn out there. It is more like a Victorian romance to a hustler mag.