Just when you thought old media was dying. Oh wait, it is! For Hungry Mag, Barry Strum delivers a meditation on his former love affair with food magazines, and his current disillusionment with the preponderance of the glossy crop: the excessive ad pages, and the Stepford-esque “spontaneous dinner parties” that they present:
…a high-speed collision with Ralph Lauren (crushing Martha Stewart in the process). You know the article type: The Pfeffermans are having a few dozen of their best friends over for an impromptu tapas session, or the Palmers entertain a crowd for the Oscars, or the Rabinowitzes invite the whole meshpucha over for a Reformed Jewish take on Passover, complete with exotic dishes from Eastern Europe (for Bubbie & Zaydeh) through the Sephardic cuisines of the Levant, all the way to the original recently discovered Seder menus of the long lost Sherpa Jews.
Our personal favorite (or would that be least-favorite?) was when Food & Wine did a Latke & Vodka Hanukkah article, and we nearly had to be medically resuscitated, so great was our simultaneous disdain towards the article’s subjects and self-loathing at our own inability to pull something like this off.
Food Memoir: Tragic Triage [Hungry Mag]
Hanukkah - A Latke-Vodka Party [Food & Wine]
[Vintage Bon Appetit cover via]
